35?

SERGI AGUILAR

CARMEN CALVO

TERESA GANCEDO

New Images from Spain

MUNTADAS/SERRAN PAGAN
_
MIQUEL NAVARRO

GUILLERMO PEREZ VILLALTA

JORGE TEIXIDOR

DARIO VILLALBA

ZUSH
NEW IMAGES FROM SPAIN
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Library and Archives

http://www.archive.org/details/newimagesfromspaOOro
 New Images from Spain
BY MARGIT ROWELL

This project is supported by the

Comite Conjunto Hispano Norteamericano
para Asuntos Educativos y Culturales, the
Instituto de Cooperacion Iberoamericana
and The Merrill G. and Emita E. Hastings
Foundation

THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK

Published by

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980

ISBN: 0-89207-023-4
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 79-92992
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980
 THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION
President Peter O. Lawson-Johnston
Trustees The Right Honorable Earle Castle Stewart, Joseph W. Dormer, John Hilson,
Eugene W. Leake, Wendy McNeil, Frank R. Milliken, A. Chauncey Newlin,
Lewis T. Preston, Mrs. Henry Obre, Seymour Slive, Albert E. Thiele, Michael
F. Wettach, William T. Ylvisaker
Theodore G. Dunker, Secretary, Treasurer
Honorary Trustees Solomon R. Guggenheim, Justin K. Thannhauser, Peggy Guggenheim
in Perpetuity

Advisory Board Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Simon

THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

Director Thomas M. Messer
Staff Henry Berg, Deputy Director
Floyd Lattin, Museum Secretary; Susan L. Halper, Executive Assistant; Vanessa
Jalet, Director's Coordinator
Louise Averill Svendsen, Senior Curator; Diane Waldman, Curator of Exhibi-
tions; Margit Rowell, Curator; Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Research Curator;
Linda Shearer, Vivian Endicott Barnett, Associate Curators; Carol Fuerstein,
Editor; Mary Joan Hall, Librarian,- Ward Jackson, Archivist; Philip Verre, Susan
B. Hirschfeld, Curatorial Coordinators; Lisa Dennison Tabak, Exhibition
Coordinator
Joan M. Lukach, Research Fellow, The Hilla Rebay Foundation
Mimi Poser, Public Affairs Officer

Nancy McDermott, Development Officer; Miriam Emden, Membership

Department Head; Carolyn Porcelli, Development Associate
Agnes Connolly, Auditor,- Charles Hovland, Sales Manager; Marion Kahan,
R.
Sales Coordinator,-Rosemary Faella, Restaurant Manager; Darrie Hammer,
Katherine W. Briggs, Information
Orrin H. Riley, Conservator,- Dana L. Cranmer, Conservation Assistant;
Elizabeth M. Funghini, Associate Registrar,- Jack Coyle, Assistant Registrar;
Saul Fuerstein, Preparator Scott A. Wixon, Operations Manager; Robert E.
;

Mates, Photographer; Mary Donlon, Associate Photographer; Elizabeth S.

Celotto, Photography Coordinator
David A. Sutter, Building Superintendent; Guy Fletcher, Jr., Charles Gazzola,
Assistant Building Superintendents; Charles F. Banach, Head Guard; Elbio
Almiron, Assistant Head Guard
Life Members Eleanor, Countess Castle Stewart, Mr. and Mrs. Werner Dannheisser, Mr. and
Mrs. William C. Edwards, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Andrew P. Fuller, Mrs. Bernard F.
Gimbel, Mr. and Mrs. Peter O. Lawson-Johnston, Mrs. Samuel I. Rosenman,
Mrs. S. H. Scheuer, Mrs. Hilde Thannhauser
Corporate Patrons Alcoa Foundation, Atlantic Richfield Foundation, Exxon Corporation, Mobil
Corporation
Government Patrons National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts
ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION

SERGI AGUILAR

CARMEN CALVO

TERESA GANCEDO

MUNTADAS/SERRAN PAGAN

MIQUEL NAVARRO

GUILLERMO PEREZ VILLALTA

JORGE TEIXIDOR

DARIO VILLALBA

ZUSH
LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION

Sergi Aguilar

Carmen Calvo
J. Carrillo de Albornoz, Granada
Font Diaz, Barcelona

Teresa Gancedo

Gloria Kirby, Madrid

Collection Lambert, Brussels

Muntadas/Serran Pagan
Miquel Navarro

Guillermo Perez Villalta

Enrique del Pozo Parrado, Madrid

J. Suiiol, Barcelona

Jorge Teixidor

Dario Villalba
Zush

Museo de Arte Abstracto, Cuenca, Spain

Galeria Vandres, Madrid

;
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

New Images from Spain is meant to fulfill two of the Guggenheim Museum's
longstanding commitments: the first to younger artists whose work has not

reached a wide audience; the second to artists from ahroad and thus to inter-

nationalism. Analogous aims were pursued very recently through the presen-
tation of British Art Now: An American Perspective and in years past in
selections such as Amsterdam-Paris-Dusseldorf (1972) and Younger European
Painters (1953). The specific rationale for New Images from Spain is estab-
lished by Margit Rowell, the exhibition's curator, in the subsequent pages of
this catalogue.
The present exhibition, like all group shows of artists from abroad, in-

curred considerable costs: extensive travel by the curator was necessary and
complex logistics were involved in the documentation of material and its
eventual presentation at the initiating museum and subsequently at other
institutions in the United States. New Images from Spain could therefore be
brought to this country only with the generous support of Spanish cultural
agencies and through the initiatives of their presiding officers. Among these,
specific thanks are herewith offered to H. E. Manuel Prado Colon de Carvajal,
Ambassador President of the Instituto de Cooperation Iberoamericana H. ;
E.

Amaro Gonzalez de Mesa, Director General of Cultural Relations, Ministry

of Foreign Affairs, Madrid, )oint Chairman of the Spain-U.S. Joint Committee
for Educational and Cultural Affairs,- and Hon. Serban Vallimarescu, Coun-
selor for Cultural and Information Affairs, Embassy of theUnited States to
Spain. That such help became available is due in large measure to the interest
and commitment of the Spanish authorities a commitment, it should be
stressed, that did not in any way inhibit the Guggenheim's free and wholly
independent assertion of its qualitative judgements. The following repre-
sentatives and officials of the Kingdom of Spain have for this reason earned
our special gratitude: H. E. lose Llado Ambassador of Spain to the United
States; H. E. Javier Tusell, Director General Patrimonio Artistico y Cultural
of the Ministry of Culture; H. E. Rafael de los Casares, Consul General of
Spain; Hon. Pablo Barrios Almazor, Secretary of the Spain-U.S. Joint Commit-
tee for Educational and Cultural Affairs; Hon. Jose Luis Rosello, Cultural
Counselor, Mr. Ramon Bela, Executive Secretary of the Spain-U.S. Joint
Committee for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Exhibitions of contemporary art, in addition to providing information, are
also potential sources for museum acquisitions: here again the Guggenheim
depends upon outside help to achieve its aims. In the current instance, our
goal was to purchase one work by each of the nine artists represented in
the exhibition: assistance was provided by Mrs. Gloria Kirby and by The
Merrill G. and Emita E. Hastings Foundation and its Trustee, Mrs. Elizabeth
Hastings Peterfreund, whose generosity assured the funds necessary for the
purchase of several works. In addition, we were fortunate to receive gifts
from anonymous donors. The opportunity to enrich our collection with works
by younger artists and thereby keep pace with the developing art scene may
well be the most important aspect of the Guggenheim's international exhibi-
tion program.
Our thanks must also be expressed to the lenders whose willingness to part
with their possessions is greatly appreciated. Except for those who wish to
remain anonymous, lenders are separately listed in this catalogue.
Finally much credit is due to Margit Rowell, the Guggenheim's Curator,
who undertook the difficult task of selection of New Images from Spain and
staged the exhibition in this Museum. The bases for Margit Rowell's selective
judgements are articulated in her own preface and therefore need not be
stated here. In view of the often strenuous differences of opinion that pertain
to the evaluation of current art (a notoriously hotly debated subject), it is

appropriate to affirm our unqualified confidence in Miss Rowell's professional

capabilities and our resulting readiness to identify fully with her choices.

THOMAS M. MESSER, Director

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

New Images from Spain could not have been realized without the generous
assistance of innumerable persons throughout its planning stages. Thomas M.

Messer has acknowledged crucial contributions by organizations and individ-

uals in his preface,- I would like to add my expression of gratitude to the
following:
The galleries in Madrid and Barcelona which generously devoted time to
acquainting me with recent developments in Spanish art. In particular, the
galleries Buades, Juana Mordo and Vandres in Madrid; Ciento and Trece in
Barcelona.
The critics and friends with whom discussions helped clarify my ideas
concerning contemporary Spanish art: Juan Manuel Bonet, Paco Calvo, Vic-
toria Combalia, Daniel Giralt-Miracle, Angel Gonzalez, Fernando Huici, Fran-
cisco Rivas, Rosa Maria Subirana,- Luis and Carmen Bassat, Gloria Kirby, Jose
Sunol, Rafael and Isabel Tous, Fernando Vijande.
Finally, those responsible for the documentation of the catalogue, a task
which was carried out with exceptional perseverence and devotion: Karen
Cordero, Blanca Sanchez Perciano and Philip Verre.
Of course, my sincerest thanks go to the artists themselves, for their
uncompromising commitment to their art and their enthusiastic support of
this project. And to the many staff members of this museum whose efforts and
efficiency made the present exhibition and its catalogue possible.

M.R.
 NEW IMAGES FROM SPAIN

MARGIT ROWELL If we refer to the recent exhibition Europe in the Seventies, we must confront
1

the question that was posed there: does Or is it "almost an

European art exist?

American invention"? 2 In the context of Spain, this brings to mind other ques-
tions. Presuming that Spanish art does exist, does our ignorance of it stem from

a historically determined situation: the relative isolation of the Spanish penin-

sula from the rest of Western economic and cultural development during the
twentieth century? Does it which nourishes
derive from a kind of chauvinism
indifference to culture from abroad? Or is it due to a growing cosmopolitanism
in which all artists are grouped in a single pseudo-nation and no importance
is attached to native origins?
Despite prevalent views to the contrary, origins and environment are of
some importance. It is a truism to assert that a country's culture is related to
political, social, economic conditions, not to mention intellectual history and
emotional idiosyncracies. Yet we cannot totally disregard this generality. An
artist's relation to society is defined by the substance of the society within
which he livesand works: its mentality, traditions, customs; its political frame-
work, its socialand cultural history, its economic priorities. An artist's rela-
tionship to the world at large is determined by his access to that world: the
scope of information available to him.
In attempting to analyze the art of a country which is not one's own, these
factors must be kept in mind. Studying an art means studying the milieu in
which it emerged. Yet this is eminently dangerous. For each critic invokes his
own and cultural background in making his judgements. Whereas his
social
knowledge is full and his instincts innate concerning his native context, they
can only be partial in reference to a foreign culture. Thus, from the outset,
we must recognize that our American perspective of Spanish art cannot be the
same as the Spanish view of this same art.

The last exhibition of "contemporary" Spanish art selected by a major Amer-

ican institution was Frank O'Hara's New Spanish Painting and Sculpture
shown The Museum of Modern Art in New York in i960, some twenty years
at

ago. Even at that time, Spanish art was inadequately known abroad. Since then
international exposure to Spanish art has been even more limited. Nonetheless,
on the basis of quite fragmentary evidence, speculation has flourishd. Before
attempting to examine the creative activity of the 1970s, therefore, it would be
interesting to outline the discrepancies between the American perspective and
certain realities of Spanish art over the past thirty years.
The American vision of Spanish art from the past few decades may be
summarized briefly as follows: starting in the mid-i9sos, Spaniards emerged
on the international art scene with an impact which was extraordinary, par-

1. The Art Institute of Chicago, October S-November 27, Iy77, Europe in the Seventies: Aspects of
Recent Art. Traveled to Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., March 16-
May 7, 1978; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June 2vAugust * Fort Worth Art Museum, Sep-
tember 24-Octobcr 29; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, December I, 1978-January }r, 1979.
2, "A Letter from Rudi Fuchs," Europe in the Seventies, p. IV
 %

Antoni Tapies
Great Painting. [958
Oil with sand on canvas, 79 x 102 "X > X -

The Solomon R.
Collection
Guggenheim Museum, New York

3i <-*

ticularly in view of their noticeable absence from that arena since the Civil
War. In 1956 Spain began submitting to international biennials major and
significant selections by her artists, many of whom received honors. The sculp-
tor Jorge de Oteiza and the painter Modest Cuixart won Grand Prizes at Sao
Paulo in 1957 and 1959. In Venice Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tapies and Luis
Feito were awarded prizes in 1958 and i960. The presence of these painters and
sculptors at such exhibitions gave rise to the idea that Spain was a liberal
democracy where artists could create freely, and where their work was not
only accepted but promoted by the government agencies controlling the selec-
tions to be sent abroad.
The Spanish art which won international prizes, although original, had
certain affinities to art produced elsewhere. Spanish painting, mainly from
Barcelona and Madrid, projected an expressionist and existentialist intensity
comparable to that of Abstract Expressionism in America and tachisme in
France. Like its counterparts in other countries, this art expressed the freedom
and value of the individual human act in the face of a mounting tide of con-
sumerism, industrialization and a progressively dehumanized society and en-
vironment. But even more significantly, to an outsider's eyes, this Spanish art
seemed a revolutionary art; it was interpreted as a protest against the current
political regime, albeit in abstract and somewhat elliptical terms.
Eduardo Chillida The most famous examples, from an American point of view, were Tapies
From Within. 1953 and Chillida (exceptional as a sculptor), Manuel Millares and Antonio Saura.
Forged iron, 38%" h. Tapies' seemingly irrational human gestures, his manipulation of natural col-
Collection The Solomon R. ors and textures (signifying a return to essential values) appeared in this con-
Guggenheim Museum, New York text to be a broadly political statement. Chillida's organic emblems in iron
and wood, with their rough, hand-hewn
were read in similar and
qualities,

vernacular terms. The naked violence and what was interpreted as an energy
of despair in Saura's and Millares' tortured images, combined with their rejec-
tion of color (or predilection for black, white, sometimes red) were linked to a
native past (for example, the tcnebiismo of Goya), but at the same time seemed
to manifest an untenable political situation specific to the present.
This generation was particularly visible during the late fifties and early
sixties. The next phase of Spanish art appeared to express a reaction to in-
formalism, a desire to be and more operational, and an aware-
less subjective

ness of Pop Art and the mass media which were symptomatic of the new
generation's relationship to reality. At the same time an outside observer as-
sumed that the political situation had improved, censorship had been relaxed
and the artist felt free to express himself in more legible and explicit (that is,
figurative) images. We may evoke Rafael Canogar and Juan Genoves whose
only slightly veiled images of protest were presumably acceptable, since they
too were sent to international exhibitions. A criticism of the Spanish political
situation was still present, it seemed. However, this generation of the mid-
sixties and early seventies stated its case more clearly, without ambiguity.
Yet, with a few exceptions, the artists of this era are already relatively
obscure in the United States. For whatever reasons, the American stereotype
of "Spanish" art remains that established by the previous generation: dra-
matically expressionist, richly textured, chromatically sober.
Therefore, the art emerging in Spain today is surprising. It is extremely
eclectic, encompassing a broad range of styles, from realism to varied sorts
of figuration, to geometric abstraction, to a kind of Color Field, to all manners
of Conceptual Art (Land Art, Media Art, Body Art|. One finds new materials,
new themes, new subjects and objects, new processes and techniques, all of
which appear to be developing in an atmosphere of total freedom.
If there is one common denominator in the more interesting and original
art in Spain today, it is the ostensible lack of politicization. And so we conclude
that this is the image of the new Spain; this is the definition of post-Franco
art: an art-as-art expression.

The Spanish perspective, logically and naturally, is quite distinct from our
own. Beginning with the generation of Tapies, Chillida, Millares, Saura (our
emblematic references to a group that included many more), two miscon-
ceptions have been perpetrated. The first concerns the fact that these artists did
indeed live in an extremely conservative and repressive society against which
they were in revolt through their underground cultural activities and their
Antonio Saura
Rioni. 1959
Oil on canvas, 63% x 51%"

Juan Genoves
The Window. 1975
Oil on canvas, 59 x 53 V&"
Private Collection

Manuel Millares
Dwarf. 1959
Oil on burlap, 63% x 5014

13
 left-wing political position. Yet their artistic expression was political only

inasmuch an alternative to the reactionary nationalist and

as they sought
traditionalist culture promoted by the regime. They sought to prove that art
and culture must be free from political control and must not lose touch with
the most essential and profound human values. Undeniably there was inten-
sityand anxiety in the forms of the new art. But the supposition that its

iconography embodied an explicit ideology of political revolt is false.

Many of the Barcelona-based Dau al Set group were attracted

5
to French
Surrealism and, of course, were sensitive to its undertones of political subver-
sion. Yet the Surrealists' real appeal lay in their notion of an art which drew
on the subconscious and their technique of automatism, areas of interest to

the concurrent French tachiste school as well. Elsewhere, in Madrid, Millares

of the El Paso' group was drawn
American Abstract Expressionism. In view
to

of the profound Europe and America after the

spiritual disillusionment in
Spanish Civil War and World War II, the recuperation of irrational and indi-
vidual impulses as antidotes to an increasingly rational, mass-oriented society
was general. It is therefore more realistic to say that the ultimate concerns of
these artists were moral on the one hand and formal on the other, rather than
expressly social or political. And if the works from this era are still meaningful

today, it is because of their formal qualities.

The second clarification which must be made in this context is that the
generation of the fifties, although they represented political opposition, were
not persecuted for their artistic expression. In the mid-1950s Spain began to

emerge from a period of isolation and, subsequent to new political and eco-
nomic agreements with the United States and Europe, could finally encour-
age tourism and foreign investment. These phenomena forced the Spanish
government to attempt to modify its image from that of a repressive dictator-
ship to one of a liberal democracy.
Hence, the regime's constraints on left-wing intellectuals became more
subtle than they had been in the more openly repressive forties. For example,
the artists who were sent abroad to represent a liberal Spain were given little

opportunity to exhibit at home. In Spain the official circuit was the only cir-

cuit, and here the government exercised other criteria, selecting post-Cubist
and late Surrealist artists for domestic consumption. Since there were few
private galleries, few collectors or patrons, and literally no art press existed,

there were no alternatives.

Everyone understood that an invitation to exhibit abroad, even though it

involved a service to the Franquist government that was often incompatible

with an artist's political convictions, represented a unique opportunity to
show work. Moreover, by the late 1950s, artists and intellectuals were naively
optimistic in believing that the regime's few overtures to the rest of Europe

v Founded in n>.ix Dau .1/ Set included the painters Iapies Cuixari and loan Tone, as well as poet-.
philosophers and critics
4 Founded in iys7. the artists of / Paso included Saura, Millares, Canogar and Manuel Rivera.

14
were signs of a liberalization and would be followed by progressive social
change.
During the 1960s the relationship between the government and artists
underwent a radical modification. Artists boycotted international exhibitions
and all government-sponsored manifestations at home. There was a violent
reaction against informalism, which was seen as the officially approved avant-
garde. Exploited by the state for its own designs to project an image of liberal-
ism abroad, informalism had also attracted younger artists who saw in its
practice an opportunity to gain an international reputation.
By 1968, social unrest had reached a peak. Universities were shut down
and the increased social awareness of Spanish intellectuals and artists led
them to question the notion of an avant-garde expression which revealed
itself to be useless and irrelevant, not only in terms of its abstract language

(hermetically obscure) but its audience (capitalist, bourgeois and international)

and its content (subjective, irrational, individualistic and without social com-
mitment). Spain's growth as a capitalist economy and the influx of foreign
information merely confirmed the political left in its perceptions of the repres-
sions and effects endemic to a capitalist state: imperialist wars, political assas-
sinations, social inequalities, police brutalities.
This complex political situation and the social consciousness of Spanish
artists gave rise to two formal directions, both developed in reaction to infor-
malism. Each tendency represented a call to order. The first was a form of
geometric abstraction, known in Spain as tacionalismo, arte analitico or arte
normative). The connotations are clear: rationalism, objectivity, anonymity. As
in earlier twentieth-century variants of geometric art, the goal was a new
pictorial language to express an ideal of harmony and order, an order which
could be integrated into the social and visual fabric of modern life. Yet it soon
became clear that even when extended to the design of everyday objects, this
language was inaccessible to the people; and the ideals referred to an ab-
stract Utopian notion of human society rather than a concrete, historically-
determined social situation.
The second dominant movement of the sixties
nueva figuration
addressed itself directly to the situation at hand. Itwas comprised of several
kinds of figuration, one of the more original of which is described by the
term "critical realism" and represented by artists such as Canogar, Genoves,
Eduardo Arroyo, Equipo Cronica? These artists and many others attacked the
capitalist world at a variety of levels through the microcosm of Spain. They
criticized political situationsand consumer society by evoking familiar inci-
dents and objects, symbols and myths. They focused on specific national prob-
lems and refused to let themselves be promoted by the regime.
These artists strove to create an art that was direct and uniquivocal in
content and language. Their precedent was the Estampa Popular movement

5. Two Valencian artists who have collaborated since the early iy6os on paintings and sculptures,
signing themselves "Equipo Crdnica."

15
i6
Jose Maria Yturralde of the late rysos and early 1960s. This was not a school based on a single style
T-26. 1972 but a group of artists of many who banded together to make
formal persuasions
Acrylic on wood, 67 y8 x 77V2" prints which would be conceptually and economically accessible to all sectors
Collection the artist of the population. Taking their inspiration from German Expressionism and
the art of the Mexican Revolution, they produced inexpensive, clearly political
woodcuts and linocuts in large numbers. They wished to subvert the idea that
Luis Gordillo
the fine arts were unique, expensive, arcane and therefore reserved for the

Male Head. 1973 educated classes.

Acrylic on canvas,
Estampa Popular was not particularly successful because its exhibitions
63 x 47 VS"
Collection Suiiol, Barcelona
were limited to the traditional fine arts circuit and the prints did not reach
J.

the inclusive population for which they were intended. Yet the experience was
fruitful for many artists in that they became aware of the resources of popular
or familiar imagery as well as the impact that a simplified visual syntax could
Eduardo Arroyo
obtain. Much of this experience would be translated into the new vernacular
Search in St. Sebastian. 1967
of nueva figuracion whose professed aims of clear, direct communication were
Oil on canvas, 44% x 5814"
identical.
Collection Peter Selinka

Equipo Cronica
The Living Room. 1970
Acrylic on canvas, 79 x 79"
Collection the artist

17
 Simultaneously, the generation of the sixties discovered Pop Art. But in
view of their cultural isolation and political commitment, the Spaniards' rela-

tionship to Pop Art differed from that of artists in other European countries.
In the first instance, Spanish artists' exposure to Pop Art was usually second-
hand, obtained either through black and white reproductions, written descrip-
tions or word of mouth reports. In other words, it usually reached them
through the media. one considers that a basic raw material of Pop Art is the
If

media image which is translated by a specific subjectivity into a language of

artistic conventions, it is interesting to observe that by the time this art form

arrived in Spain, it had been reconducted into a secondary reproduction or

media image. Second, Spain was less media-dominated than most of her Euro-
pean neighbors. And Spanish artists' training was still extremely academic.
So that the media stereotype as a new material impressed Spanish artists more
than its particular transformations.
As we have mentioned, these artists sought objectivity and communica-
tion above all else. The photographic or otherwise reproductive image pro-
vided them with a medium at the opposite extreme from that of the accepted
avant-garde of informalism: it had no texture, no subjective handwriting, no
abstract images or elliptical signs, no aura of sacredness. Their new technique

would be a decontextualization and assemblage into new images of cultural

myths and hallowed artistic styles, thereby provoking a new awareness or
questioning of accepted values. The exposure to Pop Art was extremely opera-
tive, producing results germane to the Spanish situation. Because an important

aspect of Pop Art is its challenge of the entire meaning, function and language
of the "fine" art idiom. In bringing the artist's activity to the borderline of
commercial art, it forces the invention of a new set of criteria for judging
works of art. This corresponded to the politically-grounded ideals of the new
generation of artists in Spain. It helped them develop a vocabulary and syntax
appropriate to their political, social and intellectual concerns.
These artists did not wish to be promoted through the official circuits.
Fortunately, by the late t96os and early 1970s private galleries and patrons
began to lend their support to the new generation. Spanish art was seen in
neutral public places or in private homes, foreign critics traveled to Spain,
and these critics and private dealers from abroad began to bring out Spanish
art. International exhibitions
no longer considered prestigious and political
showcases
asked international juries of critics to review national selections,
thereby providing more objective points of view.
The generation of the 1970s shares certain preoccupations with its imme-
diate predecessors but does not include political content in its art. Most of
these artists are socially concerned and many are members of the Spanish
Communist party (PCE), but this commitment is not reflected in their work.
At first glance, the art looks more innocent than that of the previous genera-
tion. It seems detached, freely imaginative, optimistic. In actual fact, perhaps
these artists are less ingenuous. Experience has revealed the pitfalls and futil-

18
 an engage art which can easily be exploited
ity of to ends antithetical to its

commitment. The younger artists are aware that art does not change the
world nor does it even reach the masses. It is perhaps the first generation for
a long time which does not feel pressure to express some political commit-
ment in its work.
Yet the rejection of the authority of the international avant-garde con-
tinues nonetheless. And this is an important consideration in the appreciation
of Spanish art today. This rejection is not based only upon ideology,- there
are practical and economic considerations as well. To begin with, the defini-
tion of the avant-garde has changed. If at the outset the term was reserved for

a minority, today its aesthetic standards are set by an international majority.

A logical sequence from one aesthetic development to the next, traced by
critics, art historians, collectors, patrons and museums, establishes and im-
poses a reassuring continuity of styles. However, the Spanish peninsula, due
to its history and geography, has been isolated from the official sequence of
avant-garde movements for several decades. Its artists have only participated
sporadically and accidentally in the international mainstream and have not
produced the same impact or reflected any of the same logical continuity at
home. Information about foreign movements is sparse and secondhand. For-
eign art books and periodicals are still largely unavailable today. Exhibitions of
artists from abroad are rare. Works by foreign artists are not collected by the
few museums of modern art in Spain.' And the fragmented information that
does exist is disparate and meaningless in a country whose twentieth-century
history is parallel to but separate from that of the rest ofEurope. As a result,
the Spanish artist's creative life is peripheral to the international mainstream.
Second, the rules of the avant-garde today are determined in no small way
by a buyer's and seller's market. But an art market as it exists elsewhere is not
a reality in Spain. An art market which imposes demands, dictates public
taste, deals out critical or financial acclaim at an international level, is almost
an abstraction to many Spanish artists today and, as a result, it is not a priority.
This is equally true for many Spanish critics and collectors, for whom the
succes d'estime counts as much if not more than the succes commercial. Spain
is perhaps one of the last countries in which this distinction is sustained.
Therefore, the Spanish artist is less self-conscious than others regarding
a competitive market system, with its imperious aesthetic and economic value
scales. The incomplete nature its lack of mean-
of information from abroad and
ing in relation to his own context forces him
on the resources his coun-to rely
try can offer: his past and present, his emotional and conceptual experience,
his physical environment and cultural traditions, and accessible knowledge,
even if only fragmentary. This creates a restricted universe of material which

6. On the subject of museums of contemporary art in Spain, their history and collections, see Rosa
Man'a Subirana, "Museos y Centros de Arte Contempnraneo en el Estado espanol," m Batik (Barcelona],
no. 3S, June-luly iy77, pp. 41-47. It is worth noting m this context that some artists of an older genera-
tion have sought to perpetuate the lack of exposure to foreign art in Spain in order to maintain their
own authority.

19
must suffice. And his own subjectivity and imagination which sort and filter

are his only guides.

In one sense, today's Spanish artist is in an enviable position. He is not
psychologically competitive or economically oriented. Since information from
the outside is a minor and marginal coefficient in the equation that defines
his art, he does not risk becoming derivative of the international avant-garde.

Because no market exists home, the artist is in a position to generate one

at
forge his own criteria and form his audience and critics. And the historical
conjuncture of theoretical, political and economic freedom (despite rampant
inflation) is favorable. So that paradoxically, isolation, often a handicap in
Spanish history, may offer an advantage to this generation.

POETIC REALISM: TERESA GANCEDO

In today's international art world, true realism is not avant-garde. From the
Spanish perspective, in some ways it is even more traditional than elsewhere,
because it has existed for so long, at least since the sixteenth century when
Spanish and Flemish painting shared many common characteristics.Although
certain styles of realism have lately come again to the international vanguard
scene in the forms of Pop Art, Hyper-, Sharp Focus-, or Photo-Realism a
tradition of muted, near-literal realism, not comparable to these, has pursued
its uninterrupted course in Spain for several decades. In a way, it is a separate,

parallel tradition, represented today by its strongest and best-known exponents:

Antonio Lopez-Garcia, Julio Hernandez, Carmen Laffon, Francisco Lopez and
others.
The work Gancedo, the artist closest to a realist tradition in this
of Teresa
exhibition, is and personal synthesis of modernist concerns and this
a strange
tradition of realism, and is thus unassimilated and marginal to both. Gancedo's
realist affinities are seen in her subject matter and her technique. Her subjects

are taken from the age-old traditions of a Catholic country (she is not a prac-
ticing Catholic and feels these motifs belong to popular rather than religious
customs pertaining to the ritual celebrations of life and death). Although
images of death dominate her most recent paintings the reliquaries, ceme-
teries, mortuary wreaths death for Gancedo is not frightening but natural.
Perhaps it is the extreme moment of revelation of the meaning of life. She
also draws on nature: birds and reptiles, trees and flowers at different stages
of their life cycles: egg, embryo, skeleton returning to dust; bud, flower, dead
denuded branch.
Gancedo's technique is also related to a realist tradition. Often her point
of departure is a photograph magazine or newspaper, which may be
from a
reproduced as is (through photo emulsion directly on the canvas), or hand-
tinted. Sometimes she makes objects (of wrapped twigs, for example) which
she attaches to the canvas, or she copies in perfect renderings. Her drawing
Antonio Lopez-Garcia
Icebox. 1968
Oil on wood panel, 47*4 x 57V6"

is precise and immaculate to the point of trompe-l'oeil. Each formulation is

a different transcription of reality.

Despite these distinct and faithful translations of real objects, the results
are situated at a level other than reality itself: because the artist's reality exists
in a time-frame very different from that of our everyday lives. Whether the
objects are isolated in sequential compartments, organized according to a grid
structure or freely dispersed over the flat surface of her support, they are
severed from the time and space of their original context and are also foreign
to our own lived experience. Occasionally blurred by a uniform faded wash
or clouded glass panes, they seem to be filtered through the artist's personal
memories and redistributed according to her own sense of time: past, present,
possible or undefined. Thus they cannot be read according to the automatisms
of ordinary perception (from close-up to depth or from whole to part, for
example]. Because we are forced to follow a linear or circular discursive se-
quence we must shift from one level of reality to another, thereby encountering
different physical, spatial, temporal, perceptual, tactile experiences.
So that if Gancedo's vocabulary derives from a realist tradition, her syn-
tax the alternate or simultaneous uses of the grid, narrative sequence, repe-
tition
and rhythm, or even an allover emphasis shows an awareness of
strictly contemporary formal preoccupations. As a young artist she was at-
tracted to Lopez-Garcia for certain aspects of his realism: a magical intimacy
in his approach and the mixture of reminiscences and present reality,- and to
Tapies for a mystical relationship to reality, seen in his abstract concept of
space, his mysterious transformations of concrete materials and "floating"
objects (unanchored in reality, even though tactile entities).
Although we can understand the logic of her affinities, Gancedo's dis-
course on reality expresses a highly idiosyncratic vision and method, a subtle
emulsion of subjectivity and objectivity, which cannot be assimilated to
either of these modern traditions.

EXPRESSIONIST BAROQUE: DARIO VILLALBA

Aesthetically, Villalba belongs to the second postwar generation. But his art
proves that superficial distinctions, based on immediate impact or partial
knowledge, do not remain valid under scrutiny. Villalba's work has been
compared to the critical realism of Genoves and Canogar, artists who osten-
sibly repudiated informalism and attempted to make more direct political or
social statements.
Yet it is important to isolate the aspects of informalism which were un-
acceptable to the subsequent generation. These were, in particular, its abstrac-
tion, its manipulation of crude materials and its individualistic expression. The
artists of the next generation, while they sought a solution in more anonymous
figuration often inspired by or borrowed from the media did not abandon
the chromatic sobriety, the attention to materials (although different materials)
and the underlying expressionism and moral implications of their predeces-
sors. They did not reject informalism out of hand, only some of its more
obvious characteristics.
Villalba has chosen photography and plastic as his materials, not only as
a result of his exposure to Pop Art but because they correspond to the reality
he seeks to depict. His reality is that of the human condition in the modern
world, a condition of estrangement in a technological environment. The ar-

tist's particular focus is alienation, as producing acute physical or mental pain

(sickness or madness), and leading to hospitalization, imprisonment or other
forms of ostracism from human society. Yet the isolation and psychological
suffering are as intense for those who continue to live in society. So that Vil-
lalba's subject matter essentially fugitives or victims of society are para-
digms of our own existence.
Photographs, as objective representations of living beings, divest human
figures of warmth, mobility, expression, emotion, and translate them into clin-
ical records. For Villalba, photography is the ideal medium through which to

abstract highly-charged emotional images. Yet he compensates for the loss of

human vitality by silhouetting and enlarging these mechanical images, thus
intensifying the helpless solitude of his subjects.
Through much of the 1970s Villalba encapsulated his iconic silhouettes
in plastic bubbles. The figures, free in space, are in fact entrapped within invis-
Juan Genoves
On the Ground. 1975
Oil on canvas, 33V2 x 39-%"
Private Collection

tffci

ible walls, suffocating, separate. Hanging from a frame, they may be pushed or
played with, a further allegory of their victimization. So that photography and
plastics, despite their Pop Art origins, are not used to evoke the anonymous
banality of our consumerized lives but to remind us of the existence of other
values from which we have isolated ourselves.
Paradoxically, the use of technology humanized the artist's concept and
heightened his expressionism. Although Villalba at first did not manipulate
his photographic images (for him these figures were "untouchable"), his choice
and framing of subjects conveyed his precise feelings. The most recent work
reveals the artist's desire to participate more actively, to identify, rather than
remain intimidated or aloof. Obscuring certain details, totally obliterating

others, adding crude tense gestures which accentuate the contained emotion
(instead of showing the artist's real compassion), he arrives at a more mysteri-
ous but no less powerful statement.
These recent paintings reveal a nostalgia for Abstract Expressionism (an
avowed affinity) and the more European form it took in work
El Paso. In this

we may speak of a baroque sensibility in which aggressive physicality and a

kind of compassionate mysticism fuse in an image of violent oppositions and
vitally expressive motifs.

13
 SUBJECTIVITY/OBJECTIVITY: MUNTADAS
Villalba's baroque expression, despite its borrowing of images and techniques
from the Pop idiom, is nonetheless close, in its humanistic preoccupations, to
the art of the fifties. Both are existential, moralizing and draw on the irrational
of both artist and viewer. But what is the subjectivity of our time? The genera-
tions of the sixties and early seventies were usually more sceptical than their
predecessors, maintaining that there is no subjectivity but rather a pseudo-
subjectivity shaped by an invisible although pervasive ideological context. The
goal of the critical realists, for instance, was to dismantle the system of hidden
mechanisms which controls and directs so-called subjectivity.
Some artists (such as those of Equipo Cidnica) sought to subvert the ideo-
logical framework through the medium of art itself. They borrowed their
visual vocabulary from the media and from earlier, established avant-gardes,
displacing or decontextualizing it so it could be seen for what it was and no

longer as an unquestioned, untouchable cultural symbol. They provoked a

new look at art, at cultural values, at the automatisms of perception; at the
relationships between culture and society, between art and politics. Others,
like Muntadas, felt obliged to choose different visual means which, although
generally accepted, were less culturally sacred and paralleled or illuminated
the conditioned responses of the aesthetic experience.
For Muntadas the traditional art experience is marked by passivity: the
viewer does not participate, he receives. Further, the art object has become a
marketable product and a symbol of social status. Like many artists of his age,

Muntadas attempted to escape the closed circuit of commercialized value sys-

tems and make works of art which incite a participatory and critical response
and are thereby socially useful.
The landscape of twentieth-century man is a landscape of information
processed by the media. It is presumably factual (in contrast to art), and we
do not question its objective neutrality. But the media, as the word implies,
mediates information. The anonymous (or identifiable) people "behind the
news" are selective. In this they are no different from the nineteenth-century
painter who selected and modified his motifs in the process of preparing his
landscape. In both cases ideological premises color the subjectivity which
filters factsaccording to conscious or unconscious priorities.
Muntadas' goal is to demythify the notion of objectivity by attacking the
circuits of public communication. By extension this leads to a questioning of
the concept of personal freedom upon which our societies are built: freedom
to respond to outside stimuli, freedom to process information, freedom to act
or be. He also shows us that we are prisoners, not of a given society, but of
unconscious ideologies. Muntadas focuses "between the lines,"" on the dis-
torting mechanisms that change what is real into what is offered as real, and
on the commitments which direct these mechanisms.

7 The title of a project by the artist, February 1979.

24
Muntadas
Subjectivity /Objectivity:
Private /Public Information
Brochure for video presentation,
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York, April 3, 1979

^h^n ~M/^ V-^v <

kf^Jr ]Ujvv7 'UulJLV-,

C^CiTA^\f/A, kOs^A^

He uses the media to dismantle its own image. A videotape shown on a

television monitor puts the viewer in the same psychological state of passive

receptivity as that engendered by commercial television. Yet when Muntadas

reveals how the television synopsis is made and what is discarded, the viewer
realizes that the information has been processed into selected symbols which
betray the total factual fabric. He realizes he has been manipulated. And, al-
though the demonstration proves that neither he who makes the news nor he
who receives it has any personal freedom, an awareness of this erosion of
reality can produce more active critical attitudes.

Since Muntadas is Catalan by birth, he has firsthand knowledge of ide-

ological manipulation. The Franquist regime was particularly repressive in
Catalonia, banning the Catalan language in schools and printed and spoken
media, attacking all other aspects of the Catalan national culture and identity

and substituting an all-powerful centralized, conventionalized (and by Catalan

standards, meaningless) propaganda. Probably for these reasons, there is more
politically oriented and conceptual art in Barcelona than elsewhere in Spain,-
and no doubt for the same reasons, Catalans form the majority of Spanish
expatriates. Yet if Catalonia is an extreme example, it is not unique. A strong
contextual ideology is the spiritual and practical basis of all human societies.

25


In his most recent project, Pamplona-Grazalema, Muntadas (in collabora-

tion with the social anthropologist Gines Serran Pagan| examines the origins
of the ancient rite of the bull in Spain; how historical conditions can deflect
and distort the connotations of a symbol and how
used as an this symbol is

two distinctly different social frameworks. This col-

ideological vehicle in
laborative venture
an interaction of two subjectivities made up of different
backgrounds, knowledge and perspectives
represents the only possibility
of approaching objectivity.

ORGANIC GEOMETRY: SERGI AGUILAR

Sergi Aguilar's recent sculpture is a synthesis of conflicting premises. His forms
are at once rectilinear and organic, geometric and fluid. Executed in black
Belgian marble, their density and weight are manifest; at the same time, their
scale is intimate and certain configurations tend toward the two-dimensional
or pictorial.
Modern Spanish sculpture until the present generation has explored two
distinct directions. The earliest and probably most indigenous is represented
by Oteiza (unfortunately little-known in America) and Chillida. It is gestural,
organic and crudely forceful, and presumably refers to the products and tools
of the ancient Basque tradition of wrought iron. The second, less well-known
and perhaps less original, embodies the more recent concepts of arte norma-
tive), analitico or racionalisto and is exemplified in the sculpture of Andreu
Alfaro. In the first, the material is significant and dictates the forms; in the
other, the material is secondary to the abstract concept and image.
Aguilar's earliest sculptural activity obeyed an abstract geometric aes-
thetic. Perhaps this formulation appealed to him in the late sixties and early
seventies as a way of rejecting the image of the avant-garde Spanish sculpture
promulgated consumption at home and abroad. Yet Aguilar looked to
for
abstraction not as an expression of "rational" premises, but for its formal
purity. Brancusi was an early influence as a paragon of pure form as well as
for his attention to the specific properties of materials. The Russian Con-
structivists were important for analogous reasons. Yet, starting around 1975,

Aguilar began to examine natural forms twigs and branches, for example
which escape rationalization because we can neither control nor explain their
vitality. His idiom today is a combination of abstract and organic forces.

One would be tempted to define Aguilar's recent sculpture as a kind of

organic Constructivism. But this is an approximation. His respect for ma-
terials may derive from a Constructivist aesthetic. This consideration is seen

in the low-lying silhouettes of many of his pieces which express the weight
and density of his mediums. Further, the two-dimensionality of much of his
work evokes a planar tradition in sculpture which originates in Cubism and
Constructivism. The notion of pictonality is heightened by polished surfaces
which emphasize planes and by drawn incisions and precise flat areas of light

26
Andreu Alfaro
Dawn. 1962
Iron, i7 3/4"h.

and shadow. The concept of a dialogue between closed mass and open space,
visible in his sculpture, is also Constructivist in its source. Articulated units
are usually carved from a single block; the immanent presence of their matrix
imposes a spatial continuum. The surrounding space is part of the work, and
the fact that elements of certain sculptures may be moved apart, opened or
closed, allowing light and air to enter, explicitly reinforces these spatial
concerns.
Yet stone and marble are not usually identified with the language of
Constructivism. Although Aguilar respects his materials to a point, he forces
their potential into unpredictable forms, diverting them from their original
destiny. Nevertheless, the integrity of the material is not violated. It speaks
for itself but in a different voice. Thus, a contradiction between natural and
cultural forces is constantly visible. One might expect these forces to be
mutually destructive, creating a strangely dissonant formal hybrid. On the
contrary, each reinforces the particularity of its opposite.
Much modern sculpture relies on new mediums and materials such as
plastics, polyurethanes, strident colors, found objects, or attempts to transgress
the traditional boundaries of art, dissolving mass into void or translating ab-
stract ideas into concrete forms. Aguilar's sculptures, which are mediated but
not rational, organic but not expressionist or gestural, the formulation of
plastic concerns rather than abstract ideas, stand aside from the mainstream
of contemporary sculpture.

27
 PINTURA-PINTURA: JORGE TEIXIDOR
From an American perspective, a Spanish Color-Field painter seems to be
a contradiction in terms. Where is the texture we associate with Spanish
painting? Where are the gesture, the aggressive color contrasts, the images
(abstract or Surreal or blatantly political)? Teixidor was probably aware of
the Spanish stereotype, and his art, like that of other members of his genera-
tion, was a conscious or unconscious attempt to break the hold of that image.
Teixidor belongs to the generation which discovered Pop Art and found
in it an alternative to native idioms. Although he was never a Pop artist in any
sense of the term, the formal innovations of the style were important for him,
providing a less provincial and more concrete starting point for his evolution.
In Valencia the threat of provincialism was strong. Furthermore, when artists
did revolt against the excessively academic training of the Valencian Escuela
des Bellas Artes, they usually pursued one of two directions: azte normative)
or geometric abstraction, introduced in the rgsos by the groups Parpallo and
Equipo 57; or figuration, which dominated Teixidor's own generation and was
particularly aggressive in the circle around Equipo Cronica.
Teixidor's itinerary is meaningful because it is exemplary for an artist of

his generation. Turning his back on informalism, his initial impetus came
from more concrete, less mystical and less specifically native painting styles.
Yet, whereas Pop Art and geometric abstraction provided formulas for chal-
lenging the limits of painting, they offered no means for development within
those limits. So that Teixidor finally returned to a primary dialogue with
nature, process, color and space.
The subsequent canvases are based on a plastic vision that is free of the
mediation of conceptual premises. In the early works of this series, Teixidor
drew his inspiration from nature close-up photographs of details from land-
scape in order to capture an abstract morphology which he translated with
a loose brushstroke and an indistinct modulated, milky chromatism. These
paintings are allover in the American sense; yet the presence of almost in-
visible horizontal or vertical lines endows them with an implicit man-made
structure or architecture which removes them from their original naturalistic
source. These linear tracings, perhaps a holdover from the "constructed" spaces
of his earlier works, also create an ambiguous spatial milieu: the viewer is
simultaneously conscious of the physical presence of surface and of illusory
depth.

Teixidor's painterliness is not unique in Spain if it were, his experience
might be less significant in the context of this exhibition. Older artists have
been exploring this direction as well: Jose Guerrero, who has lived mainly
in New York since 1949 and Rafols Casamada of Madrid come to mind. In-
creased access to information has induced younger artists for example, the

Trama group in Barcelona to attempt to work within the limits of a painterly
tradition.

28
 Color-Field painting, although respected abroad, has had fewer disciples
or outgrowths than other American-based artistic movements. This circum-
stance presumably stems from the movement's origin in a peculiarly American
sensibility, untrammelled by tradition and characterized by particularly free

concepts of space, technique and color. It is a pure painting experience, an

art-as-art experience, and has no secondary subject matter to reassure the

viewer. Recent European attempts to expand upon Color-Field painting for

example, the French support-surface artists or the above-mentioned Trama
group have therefore depended upon a vast theoretical framework and much
prose to make it palatable to a public initially unsympathetic to its premises.
Thus Teixidor's experience is in some ways unusual. He came to his personal

solution through an instinctive need to extricate himself from the intellectual

games of geometric abstraction and to address the specific issues of pure paint-
ing. He made his transition by exploring the problematics of Monet, Matisse,
Rothko, which ultimately led him back to natural light, natural color, natural
space. He does not rely upon theorizing to make his work acceptable. As
painting, it must justify itself.

EGO: ZUSH
Extreme Catalaneity and acute schizophrenia are the first impressions pro-
duced by Zush's paintings, drawings and books. Catalan traits are most im-
mediately evident in the apparent inspiration from the occult, embodied in
the supernatural, phantasmagoric figures which have been a constant in
Catalan art since the Middle Ages. We find recent examples of these motifs
in Miro's "magic-realist" period of 1923-24 and in drawings and paintings by
Barcelona's Dau al Set group, particularly in the work of Joan Pong and Modest
Cuixart. It may also be argued that specific leitmotifs frogs, lizards, snakes,

snails and bats derive from Catalan Romanesque bestiaries,

and the isolated
eyes of supernatural vision perhaps recall those found on the wings of medieval
seraphim. The miniaturization of forms and flat, acidulated hues provoke fur-
ther reminiscences of Catalan manuscripts.
Catalaneity is also presumably expressed in the jagged energetic signs of
Zush's cryptic alphabet. A secret code which can only be deciphered by initi-
ates, it conjures up associations with the cabala. The emphasis on graphic
gestures as vehicles of vitality, of metaphysical anxieties and simple pleasures,
as enigmatic signs of the magical and the real, occurs also in the oeuvre of
Miro, Tapies, Pone and Cuixart.
The rich accumulation of these elements, motivated by a sort of horror
vacui, produces the effect of a schizophrenic art, sophisticated to be sure, but
close, tight, obsessional and disquieting nonetheless. Schizophrenic drawings
are an extension of self, without critical distance, objectivity, control, without
a will to communicate.

29
Modest Cuixart
Drawing for Dau al Set

Although all of these components are present in Zush's art, one must
speak here in terms of analogy rather than of direct references. Zush is a

child of the 1960s. His major influences were Pop culture, drug culture, psyche-
delic experience. His knowledge of English gave him access to Burroughs'
world; he understood The Beatles
their music which rocks the senses and
their lyrics which defy the rational structures of discourse
and he understood
their sources. He hallucinated, and this revelation of other dimensions of
human experience, alternate kinds of space and a new world of images, gave
him another sense of himself and the universe.
When Zush discovered the poetry and iconography of Dau al Set, these

forays into the unconscious were already familiar. But they did not go far
enough. Furthermore, hallucinations were not a means of escape from a
political situation but from which he felt completely alien. Yet,
a society in
he did not feel threatened by contemporary or Pop culture; on the contrary,
it was his element. He did not wish to understand the mysteries of the leg-

endary metaphysical world, but to understand his own cosmic consciousness.

So he had no reason to look toward traditional mysticism or the art of the
Middle Ages he found
;
his images and their interpretations in his own child-
hood, his fantasies, his hallucinating subjectivity.

30
 Zush's real space and his pictorial space are mental space. In the paintings,
his space can be extremely open, inhabited by floating forms (which in fact
are intricately articulated like an astronomical constellation). Or it can be
narrative or sequential. Sometimes it is frontal; sometimes it retains vestiges
of symmetry. It is never natural, logical, rational, stereometric or perspectival.
In many of the drawings the space tends to be close, filled by a tightly-knit
fabric of signs. His art manifests a primitiveand childlike relationship to the
world, a relationship without distance. Although they are not clinically schizo-
phrenic, these works are indeed obsessional.
Zush's iconography is centered unashamedly around his person as a focal
point for the only cosmic order he will ever truly apprehend. His images sig-

nify friends, feelings, events, fantasies, a private world of definitions, a per-

sonal mythology. His alphabet and handwriting were invented for his own
use and pleasure. Drawing fundamentally on his subjective experience, Zush's
purpose is to mediate the insights he has gained to the world at large.

So that this art is at once introspective and sociable. One would almost
be tempted to term it exhibitionist. For the artist delves into his most intimate
experience and shares it with his audience. The ego is the subject matter, but
as a microcosm in a world of egos. Zush's enigmatic signs, formulated in a
clear and articulate visual language, confront us as vivid and evocative images
of universal desires.

POST-MODERN PAINTING: PEREZ VILLALTA

Post-modernism in architecture is superficially described as nostalgic, eclectic
and decorative. It not only challenges the noble notion of the avant-garde
(as a looking and moving forward) but also repudiates the conventions of
seriousness, originality and good taste traditionally identified with high cul-
ture. To its critics, this architecture is blasphemous, reactionary and deja vu,
shocking, displeasing, disconcerting. Perez Villalta's painting is amusing,
ornate, electic and confusing. It is loaded with nostalgic and contradictory
references both thematic and stylistic to other times and places. Its forms
are distorted, its colors are dissonant. The space defies analysis; the content
seems at once rhetorical and mundane. Perhaps we may conclude that this is
an example of post-modern painting.
Perez Villalta belongs to a generation which has chosen to disdain openly
and explicitly all the avant-garde purports to honor. Rather than predicating
the future, he explores the past. He prefers figuration to abstraction and assimi-
lates kitsch, Art Deco and all forms of popular culture without excusing him-
self. He dares to be subjective, even autobiographical. He discards social con-
sciousness. His is a knowing and ironic comment on the fallacies and vanities
of the avant-garde as we understand it. Yet in so doing, he attempts to reassess
the possibilities of a traditional pictorial language stripped of all established

3i
 cliches. And thus his peculiar discourse is an elusive investigation of the very
codes of painting.
Perez Villalta's central concern, often highly visible, is the "impossible
combination," or the fundamental and unalterable contradiction. At the most
obvious level this is apparent in his adoption of thematic and stylistic material
from the past which he elaborates in an idiom emphatically of the present.
It is further seen in the casual juxtapositions of good and bad taste, of modern
and ancient symbols, of realism and abstraction. In a more general but more
subtle manner, it is expressed in the extremely deliberate construction of his
canvases and seemingly irrational space thereby generated. For example, many
of his paintings, such as In Octu oculi and Ecstasy During the Siesta are com-
posed according to a rigorous grid system. Yet the disquieting, spatial milieu
produced triggers an emotional rather than a rational response.
The artist's themes are subjective. They reenact his
real and fantasy life,

his intellectual, emotional and aesthetic experience. A key theme is the "im-
possible combination" of the European and African worlds, a contradiction
fundamental to Spain. This dichotomy is particularly crucial to Perez Villalta's
own experience because he comes from Tarifa, the southernmost tip of Spain

near Gibraltar the gate between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. In this
part of Spain, the attractions of the rational and the irrational, the abstract and
the real, classicism and romanticism are equally powerful.
In the Annunciation or The Meeting, the artist has taken a classic pictorial
theme and interpreted it according to his own vision. On the left, the man
(traditionally the angel) enters the scene from the outside. His universe is
that of reason, creation, the spirit, enhanced by the appropriate symbols: a
fruit tree, paper and ink, a palette. It is a world of Cartesian clarity, expressed

by a coherent perspective with infinite and logical transitions, cool muted

colors, a gray hazy light. The woman's universe on the right is a closed ego-
centric and introverted sphere, where the acts and symbols relate to her own
body: a mirror, a piece of fruit and a chess set for her reflection, consumption
and diversion. The colors are harsh and bright, the depth is limited, finite. The
two panels are separated by an imaginary space, bounded on either side by
Avila and Calpe, the pillars of Hercules, the gates to each world.
The Studio, inspired by Velazquez' las Meninas and an interior by Ver-
meer, presents the same contradictions, although concentrated in two meta-
phors of landscape. While no longer dominant, the theme is treated once again

in In Octu oculi, which refers to a painting by the same name by the seven-
teenth-century Sevillan painter Valdes Leal. The primary subject is the instant
of revelation of life's mysteries or the passage from childhood to adolescence.
Neither Perez Villalta's themes nor his inspiration can be considered par-
ticularly original. The thematic references are classical; the stylistic allusions
and many motifs and symbols are also eminently familiar. Yet the images have
been mixed and reordered as in a kaleidoscope, according to an original spatial

32
vision, producing an impression of the fresh and unfamiliar and eliciting an
unforeseeable emotional response. The impossible combination of realism and
abstraction occurs here in a post-modern synthesis.

AN ARCHEOLOGY OF PERCEPTION: CARMEN CALVO

The city of somewhat isolated geographically, economically and
Valencia is

culturally from main circuits of artistic activity, both in Spain and

the
abroad. As noted earlier, the dominant tendencies in this area from the late
fifties tothe late seventies were geometric abstraction and critical realism.
Miquel Navarro and Carmen Calvo belong to the generation which felt the
impact of Valencia's Estampa Popular and Equipo Cronica. Although their
work does not appear on the surface to express social consciousness, perhaps
it more clearly approximates than any other young Spanish idiom the goal of

the former avant-garde: an art which, through its opposition to the established
academies, aspires to change existing social values and inequities.
Both Calvo and Navarro worked for short periods with Equipo Cronica,
and this experience surely colored their approach to art. Both have also worked
in ceramic factories in Valencia, a city famous for its pottery production since
neolithic times. So that when they abandoned painting to adopt ceramics as
their expressive medium, their choice was rooted in personal experience and
convictions. Because manual skills are held in high regard in Valencia pri-
marily an agricultural and industrial region this reinstatement of a craft
technique should not be interpreted as an anti-art gesture, but rather as a
viable yet unvalidated alternative. However, in blurring the distinctions be-
tween fine art and popular craft, they also express their deliberate rejection
of the artificial laws of the commercial market and a desire to redefine the
work of art, the artist's activity, his role in society and the art public.
Thus Calvo's ingenuous landscapes are motivated by a certain social
consciousness. Her process (of forming, firing, breaking, coloring and sewing
or gluing clay pieces on the canvas) and her unconventional materials (clay,
but also chalk, pottery shards, glass and others) are similar to those of the
craftsman. Despite the importance of the manual labor associated with these
works, however, her formal references are artistic and cultural.
A crucial component of Equipo Cronica's critical realism is the decon-
textualization of formal and thematic material from the consecrated models
of art history. Similarly, Calvo's overt reference to French Impressionism (seen
in such works as cat. no. 13) is ironic and critical. She translates the quick,
short strokes of Impressionist brushwork into handmade and hand-colored
"strokes" in clay. After atomizing the elements of relief, color, play of light
(all Impressionist concerns), the artist aligns them like archeological specimens
on a canvas, thus destroying the mystique of individualism and temperament
related to Impressionist painting.

33


For Calvo's contemporaries, the informalism of the fifties was still the
official avant-garde model, and she was sensitive to its gestural expression and
natural materials. Yet, like other younger artists, she felt compelled to order

and reassess existing cultural materials and to recast them in the vernacular
of her own time.
Calvo is fascinated by archeology as a system of classification. Although
she may be influenced by its example, her own system of classification is

arbitrary, spurious, dictated by her personal vision, articulated by her personal

rhythms. Pre-existing modes or motifs of painting are her subject matter; she
isolates and translates these subjects into concrete artifacts, compiling them
into anthologies or repertories of plastic signs which project a new image
and meaning.
The result is a comment on
the painter's means and ends, developed in
relation to the artist's rootsand experience. In its visible contradictions
between painting and relief, past reference and present reality, freedom and

rigorous classification as well as the more fundamental contradictions be-
tween fine art and popular craft, and between formal invention and social

commitment Calvo's art is purposely ambiguous as to its ultimate aesthetic
determination.

PHYSICAL/ METAPHYSICAL EPISTEMOLOGY:

MIQUEL NAVARRO
Miquel Navarro's work is as deliberately equivocal as Calvo's. It too appears
in some ways naive and ingenuous in relation to most present-day avant-garde
art. Yet infused with the traditional avant-garde's social awareness trans-
it is

lated intoan autonomous cultural statement. In attempting to free his artistic

language from the connotations of earlier idioms, Navarro hopes to alter the
artist's relationship to society and ultimately transform society itself.

The artist, like Calvo, has chosen the ceramic medium. His profound
understanding of its innate potential has allowed him to develop a highly
personal style. Navarro's concentrated attention to his native environment
was inescapable. As we have noted, for artists who cannot travel from Valen-
cia, information from the outside has always been sparse, gleaned from books,
periodicals and the broader cultural references of Equipo Cronica. Yet what
might have been a handicap for some artists was turned by others like Navarro
to an advantage, permitting them the freedom to invent an individual expres-
sion with neither a sense of frustration nor self-consciousness.
Clay, for Navarro, has broad cultural references. The medium is of course
related to the craft tradition of Valencia, and the manual labor and skill neces-
sary to work with it are ideologically important. But more significantly, for

Navarro clay is the primordial medium of building, and indeed most human

34
production. The earliest material from which utensils, artifacts and architec-
ture were shaped, it has been used from the time of prehistoric man to the
Egyptians to the Arabs (whose presence is still felt in Valencia) to the present.
Furthermore, clay comes from riverbeds; in its natural state, it is earth
and water; to be worked it requires air and fire. It is physical in the most real
and the most philosophical sense. Yet, due to its innate malleability, once
delivered into human hands, it may be fashioned into anything the human
mind conceives, from the most abstract schema to the most concrete form
or a synthesis of the two. Thus, its potential is truly metaphysical.
It is surely no accident that Navarro's ceramic pieces relate to both paint-
ing and architecture, the art of illusion and the art of construction. His themes
architectures, monuments, landscapes are a painter's subject matter, and
are, in fact, conceived pictorially: as an assemblage or dispersal of motifs
within a closed, set frame. The allusion to painting is visible (although some-
times deflected by a more explicit reference to architecture, for example, in
cat. no. 32,) in the wall reliefs which comprise a large portion of his oeuvre.
Yet his landscaped mesas or tables and the Pyramid obey the same laws and
operate as paintings to be seen from above. Nonetheless, these pieces are
extremely different from painting in their process (construction and place-
ment), physical presence (volume and scale) and color range (mainly the
natural colors of the materials); all of these properties modify the relationship
of the work to the viewer as well as the viewer's ultimate experience of
the work.
The emphasis in these pieces is graphic, decorative and compositional;
the structures of the motifs are extremely elementary. The materials sand,
plaster, clay, stoneware correspond naturally to the themes of building or
landscape. But it is the artist's vision that dictates their assemblage, and the
intermingling of widely diverse time frames, cultural codes and visual vocab-
ularies which creates an extremely unsettling yet compelling effect.
Once again, displacement and re-creation are key concepts. We discover
archeological remnants of De Chirico, Giacometti, Russian Constructivism,
Egyptian pyramids, neo-classicist architecture, cacti and bulls' horns within
one coherent yet elusive context; allusions to nature and culture, matter and
mind, physics and metaphysics.
A broad repertory of human history and activity are reflected in these
fragile, enigmatic forms: the spiritual and the mundane, the occult and the
obvious, the ancient and the new, symbolism and formalism, sexuality and
geometry, humor and seriousness, naivete and complexity, the visionary and
the real, the Arab and the Greek worlds, the pagan and Christian. These are
not impossible contradictions but a synthesis of human experience. Beginning
with a common material and a popular craft technique, Navarro has invented
a formal vocabulary and an epistemology which remain open to multiple
readings.

35
 Although the artists in this exhibition were chosen for their intrinsic merits
alone, upon closer appraisal they seem to represent a cross-section of recent
trends in Spanish art. Extremely diverse, they share some general and fun-
damental characteristics: a reasoned decision to work within the conventions
of their medium be it painting, sculpture, ceramic, video extending but
not violating them ;
a commitment to a lived reality as well as to a broader
cultural framework; a reference to nature as a constant presence as well as
to artistic conventions; a Surrealist melange of introspection and scepticism;
an interest in metaphor,- an absence of explicit political content. One also
sees the trace of regional influences: extreme politicization in Barcelona,
strong social awareness in Valencia, for example. One can further argue that
the light of Perez Villalta is that of the south, whereas the palette ofGancedo
is rooted in northern Castille. As has been suggested, these phenomena derive
partly from the historically-determined circumstances of cultural and eco-
nomic isolation. Limiting in one sense, these factors have allowed Spanish
artists the freedom to be themselves.
Obviously, if more than anthropological interest
these artists are to be of
to the rest of the world, they must transcend their national boundaries, their
local styles and preoccupations; they must transcend the limits imposed by
a particular situation in order to communicate in universal terms. They must
bridge a cultural gap. We think they do. Whether or not Spanish artists and
critics agree, viewed from our perspective their message is critical, even sub-

versive. Beyond the formal and stylistic qualities and differences of each artist,
the work seen here connotes an opposition and/or indifference to current
social values and internationally accepted aesthetic standards. Paradoxically,
this rejection of today's established academies brings us back to the original
meaning, stance and role of the "avant-garde."

36
CATALOGUE

The documentation for the catalogue was compiled by Blanca Sanchez Perci-
ano, Madrid, with the help of Karen Cordero, Philip Verre and the artists
themselves. The exhibitions lists and bibliographies were edited on the basis
of available material in this country.
The text of Pamplona Grazalema (p. 69)
was translated from the Spanish by Hardie St. Martin; the remaining artists'

statements were translated by Lucy Flint, with the exception of Zush's which
was written in English. The catalogue was edited by Carol Fuerstein and
Margit Rowell.
In the checklist entries, measurement for height precedes width.

37
 SERGI AGUILAR

I would like to discuss the context that generates my sculptures rather than
go into details about their forms and meanings. Material and immaterial forms
exist in physical space. My observation of this space as well as of time and
nature has led me to intuit that every mass occupies its own peculiar space.
What we call "affinity" is a coincidence or approximation between things and
actions which somehow correspond to similar places and positions. When this

is produced, a harmony is established which helps us identify a term or object.

This phenomenon cannot be explained, only felt.

An idea cannot exist by virtue of itself alone, or it would exist in a closed

circuit. Ideas must exist in relation to other ideas or phenomena. This relation
is external to the practice of art. If we opt for statements that are exclusively
rational we run the risk of mechanizing and categorizing the work. This is the
farthest thing from my mind. On the contrary, the motivations for my work
are the observation of nature and the use of the imagination. When I use the
terms "natural" and "nature" I do so not in the sense of stylization, but as a

point of departure (origin) for the materialization of ideas that I would like to

execute. Proportion, growth, balance are natural.

In observing nature, we see moments of great suggestiveness in time and
space. The present is past and future almost simultaneously. Everything hap-
pens at a dizzying pace, although occasionally time is slowed or arrested by a
situation or action.
We do not attach importance to time.Nonetheless, as we approach an
event or the unfolding of an action, we perceive it and feel apprehension.
We are not aware of space, but when we are deprived of a single milli-
meter, we recognize its importance and feel its absence.
We have not been taught to look through time. To work with time re-
Born in Barcelona, 1946
quires an attitude with which we are not familiar. If we did, when faced with
Studied at Escola Massana and Con-
time's passage our vision would be broad enough to see the evolution of things
servatori de les Arts del Llibre,
Barcelona and actions both partially and totally. The distance created by time makes
Made abstract jewelry until 1971- identification possible.
72; since then has devoted himself I continually rethink my sculptures and often I glance backward to see
entirely to sculpture what I could not see when I made them. To perceive the movement produced
Lives in Barcelona in actions already accomplished. This forward-backward movement produces
a sum of practical experience, which generates the inspiration for the sculp-
ture. My discourse attempts to approach the space-time-nature phenomenon
with respect, paying maximum attention to all dimensions, a task that seems
to me fundamental in sculpture.
volume and material to be selected should be interrelated. The in-
Place,
appropriate use of any one of these elements provokes certain displacements,
a lack of harmony, in which they mav destroy one another.

38

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Instituto Britanico, Barcelona,
Forms, June 5-10, 1972
Galena Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
Cinco Artistas Catalanes, October
1972
Galeria Adria, Barcelona, MAN-73
Homenatge Joan Miro. May 1973
Galeria Trece, Basel, International
Art Fair, Art 4-73, June 20-25, 1973
Collegi d'Aparelladors, Barcelona,
Mostra d'Art Realitat, January 2-
31, 1974
Galeria Trece, Paris, FLAC-75, Janu-
ary 30-February s, 1975
Galeria J. Mas Zammit, Barcelona,
Escultores Meditcrrdneos, Tanuary-
February 1975
Galeria Fondo de Arte, Madrid, 4
Escultores Catalanes, May 197s
Galerias Adria, Trece, Basel, Interna-
tional Art Fair, Art 6-75, June 18-
23, 1975
Galeria Ponce, Mexico City, 23
Artistas Catalanes de Hoy, June 1975
Galeria Eude, Barcelona, Dibuixos
i Obras Grdfica d'Escultors Contem-
poranis, December 1975
Galeria Arturo Ramon, Barcelona,
Escultura de Petit Format. May-June
1976
Galeria Trece, Basel, International
Art Fair, Art 7-76, June r6-2i, 1976
Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona,
Museo Internacional Resistencia
Salvador Allende, July-August 1976
Galeria Trece, Barcelona, Dibuix:
S. Aguilar, J. L. Pascual. A. Ney,
July-September 1976
Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona,
Amnistia, Drets Humans i Art,
September 27-October 14, 1976
Galeria Rene Metras, Barcelona, El
Collage a Catalunya. February-
March 1978
Galeria Adria, Barcelona, 5. Aguilar
X. Francuesa, X. Grau, J. Hernandez
Pijuan, P. Puiggrbs, April 14-May 6,
1978. Catalogue
Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin,
Katalanische Kunst des 20.
New
lahrhunderts, June 25-August 23,
1978. Catalogue
Jahrhunderthalle Hoechst, Frank-
furt am Main, Katalanische Kunst
October 4-30, 1978.
seit 1970,
Catalogue
Galeria Artema, Barcelona, ir
Escultors Contemporanis a Cata-
lunya, January 27-March 20, 1979.
Catalogue
SELECTED ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS
Instituto Britanico, Barcelona,
Dibujos y Joyas, January 14-27, 1969
Galerie Trudi Fath, Goppingen,
Germany, Schmuck, September
October 1, 19(19
Llibreria de la Rambla, Tarragona,
Obiectes joia, September 5-26, 1970
Galeria Adria, Barcelona, Escultura
i Dibuix, May rs-June 8, 1974.
Catalogue
White Gallery, Lutry-Lausanne,
Dessins et Sculptures, May
30, 1976
Galeria Trece, Barcelona, Escultures
1975-77. April 14-May 14, L977.
Catalogue
Galeria Trece, Basel, International
Art Fair, Art 9-78, June 14-79, 1978.
Catalogue
Galeria Trece, Barcelona, (Set
Temps) "Transcurs" rX Fotografies.
October 3, 1979
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Newspapers and Periodicals
Alberto del Castillo, "Cronica de
Barcelona," Goy<i (Madrid), no. 120,
May 1974, pp. 385-386
Rafael Santos Torroella, "Sergi
Aguilar," El Noticiero Universal
(Barcelona), June 1974
4,
Daniel Giralt-Miracle, "Sergi
Aguilar, Destino (Barcelona), no.
1914, June 8, 1974, P- st
1
Enrique Da Cal, "tres exposiciones
de escultura," Athena (Barcelona),
no. 4, July 1974, p. 62
Rosa Maria Subirana, "Incidencia
del contexto historico, economico
y social en la evolucion de la escul-
tura abstracta en Espafia," Estudios
Pro Arte (Barcelona), no. 4, October-
November 1975, p. 26
Josep Iglesias del Marquet, "Sergi
Aguilar," Diario de Barcelona, April
16, 1977
Francesc Miralles and Rosa Queralt,
"En torno al grabado Catalan de
posguerra," Estudios Pro Arte (Bar-
celona), no. 10, April-June 1977,
pp. 44-67
Alicia Suarez and Merce Vidal, "La
4-
mostra de Sergi Aguilar a la galeria
Trece," Serra D'Or (Barcelona), no.
212, May 15, 1977, p. 45
Maria Teresa Blanch, "El humano
orden geometrico de Sergi Aguilar,"
Batik (Barcelona), no. 34, May 1977,
pp. 30-31
Josep Iglesias del Marquet, "Cronica
20-June
de Barcelona," Goya (Madrid), no.
138, May 1977, pp. 377-378
Arnau Puig, "Cronica de Exposi-
ciones," Artes Pldsticas (Barcelona),
no. 18, June T977, p. 37
Sergi Aguilar, "Encuesta a la joyeria
catalana," Batik (Barcelona), no. 36,
September-October 1977, p. 22
Victoria Combalia, Alicia Suarez
and Merce Vidal, "Tot sobre les set-
manes catalanes a Berlin," Artilugi
(Barcelona), no. 4, 1978, p. 4
Maria Teresa Blanch, "El arte
espanol de 1980, abstraccion y
naturalismo," Batik (Barcelona), no.
50, 1979, PP- 5-7
Books
Willem Sandberg, ed., "73-74" An
Annual of New Art and Artists.
London, 1974, pp. 8-1
Ralph Turner, Contemporary
Jewelry: A Critical Assessment 7945-
1975, London, 1975, pp. 73-89, 142-
143
39
foan Ramon Triado, Homcnatge Horizontal Three No. 2. 1976
dels drtistes Catalans al Centre (Horitzontal tres No. 2)
Excursionista de Catalunya, Bar- Black Belgian marble, 11% x 37% x
celona, 1976, pp. 56-57 1/-,"
30 x 96 x 14 cm.'
JoseMarin-Medina, La Escultwa Collection the artist
Espahola Contempordnea, Madrid,
1978, pp. 344-345
Reinhold Reiling, Goldschmiede-
kunst, Pforzheim, Germany, 1978,
pp. 52-56

40
Horizontal No. 6. 1977
(Horitzontal No. 6)

Black Belgian marble, 5V2 x 35% x

2%" (14 x 91 x 6 cm.)
Collection J. Suiiol, Barcelona

41
Horizontal No. 8. 1977
(Horitzontal No. S)

Black Belgian marble, 4% x 29V2 x

2%" (12 x 75 x 6 cm.)
Collection the artist

Two-One. 1978
(Dues-Una)
Black Belgian marble, 6% x 12 x
3V6" (17 x 31 x8cm.)
Collection the artist

42
Two-Three (P). 1978
(Dos-Tres /P/j

Black Belgian marble, 4 x n,^ x

15%" (10 x 59 x 38.5 cm.)
Collection The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Anonymous Gift

43
 Small Piece. 1978
(Petita Pcca)
Black Belgian marble, 4 x 5% x
7' (10 x 14.5 x 18.5 cm.)
Private Collection, Madrid

Two-Thiee (2). 1978-79

(Dos-Ttcs [2])
Calatorao stone, with base 7% x
i6Yg x 16%" (20 x 67 x 43 cm.)
Collection the artist

44
Deep Notch No. i. 1979
(Cran No. 1)

Black Belgian marble, 5% x 23% x

38%" (15 x6o\ 97. 5 cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

45
Two-Three (V). 1979
(Dos-Ties ]V])
Calatorao stone, i6V2 x 22 x 6 l/g"
(42 x 56 x 15.5 cm.)
Collection the artist

10.

Positions No. 2. 1979

(Posicions No. 2)
Black Belgian marble, 13 x 14% x
1214" (33 X37.5 X31 cm.)
Collection the artist

n.
Positions No. 3. 1979
(Posicions No. 3)
Black Belgian marble, 13x11% x
n%" (33 x 30 x 30 cm.)
Collection J. Sufiol, Barcelona

46
47
 CARMEN CALVO

As Tapies so rightly says, we, in general, keep silent, because from the outset
we resign ourselves to the impossibility of explaining our work in a few words;
one would still have to discover many of the things we have incubated through-
out months and years. Or as Henri Matisse said, the best explanation of his
style a painter can offer will be found in his canvases themselves. By this I

mean to say that it is difficult to explain one's work.

The task of experimentation the painter sets himself, the constant battle
with his materials, the manipulation of the abandoned materials he attempts
to recover
all this forms part of my creative process. I paint with the ordinary

objects of the painter (or those close to my cultural milieu) : pencils, sandpaper,
colored chalk, canvases, tubes of oil paint, rags. ... Or clay, which is linked
with my past work in ceramics; white or red clay with which I produce forms
and order and number them.
My development is based on the idea of archeology, an idea that fasci-

nates me: the concept of repetition and recovery of the object.

In 1 97 1 I two months to study the
traveled to Paris and stayed there for
work Cezanne and Henri Matisse. I became acquainted with the
of Paul
Egyptian art in the Louvre. I was interested in archeology and all that sur-
rounded it
most of all, the processes of discovering, reconstructing and
compiling archeological remains of Near Eastern cultures. These elements
and materials would serve as a source of inspiration for my later works.
I am aware that definitions are always dangerous,- they tend to reduce a

concept to a few wqrds, which may become unclear and simplistic. However,
I believe that it is necessary to provide these clues to the spectator.
Three aspects in painting interest me: form, color and object. I began
with painting in oil and acrylic, and with the subject of landscape treated in
Born in Valencia, 1950
Studied at Escuela de Artes y
an Impressionist manner. I am still interested in landscape; I use it to examine
Oficios, Valencia, iqfa-fis (degree the facture of Impressionism, but do not paint in an Impressionist style. I am
in graphic arts: advertising); Escuela still concerned with traditional premises: the primacy of the idea of painting
Superior de Bellas Artes de San and the objects of the painter.
Carlos, Valencia, 1969-72
I believe that my work has some European antecedents, but I have con-
Lives in Valencia
cerned myself with the sources of our native tradition: clay and all the mate-
rials that are in some way culturally related to the Valencian region.

48
GROUP EXHIBITIONS Eduardo Chavarri Andujar, "Dos
vertientes de la Pintura Valenciana:
Circuit) Universitario de Valencia,
El Maestro Furio y el Tandem Car-
Nuestro Yo, January 15-31, 1969
men Calvo Miquel Navarro," Las
Sala Mateu, Valencia, Paisajes, Provincias (Valencia), December 21,
May 1-30, rg69 1976, p. 18
Circulo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, Juan M. Bonet, "Corto viaje a Va-
Bodegones y Paisaies, February 1970 lencia y su pintura," El Pais (Ma-
Caja de Ahorros de Alicante, Valen- drid), December 23, 1976
cia, Paisajes, March 1970 Jose Garneria, "Galeria Temps,"
Galeria Barandarian, Bilboa, Per- Arteguia (Madrid), no. 24, Decem-
sonates Iguales, April 1971 ber 1976, p. 25

Salon National, Tortosa, Paisajes Jose Garneria, "Carmen Calvo y

en Barro, July-August 1973
Sala Atenas, Zaragoza, Paisaje,
August 1974
Galenas Punto, Temps, Val
Valencia, Els Altres 75 Anys de Pin-
turn Valenciana, April-July, 1976.
Traveled in Spain
Galeria Sen, Madrid, Seis Artistas
Valencianos, October 28-November
28, 1977. Catalogue
Museo Arqueologico, Palacio de la
Diputacion Provincial de Palencia,
Palencia, Exposicion International
de Artes PJdsticas: Homenaje a Jorge
Manrique. September 1-9, 1979
ONE-WOMAN EXHIBITIONS
Galeria Temps, Valencia [with Mi-
quel Navarro], November 16-
December 16, 197(1. Catalogue
Miquel Navarro," Artes Pldsticas
(Barcelona), no. 14, December 1976,
P- 48
i 30, Fernando Huici, "Carmen Calvo,"
El Pais (Madrid), June 2, 1977, p. 29
Fernando Huici, "Seis artistas va-
lencianos," El Pais (Madrid), No-
vember 3, 1977, p. 22
Victoria Combalia, "Una nueva
generation valenciana. Arqueologia
y autoreflexion de una practica,"
Batik (Barcelona), no. 45, November
1978, pp. 18-19
E. Arlandis, "Aproximacion a la
obra de Carmen Calvo," Cartelera
Turia (Valencia), no. 794, April 23,
1979
Fernando Huici, "Carmen Calvo, lo
femenino y el arte," Batik (Barce-
lona!, no. 49, April-May L979, pp.

Galeria Buades, Madrid, May 20, 49-50

1977. Catalogue Francisco Rivas, "Dos Pintoras Va-
Iencianas," El Pais (Madrid), May 3,
Galeria Yerba, Murcia, February 16-
March 1979, P- 34
16, 1979
Miguel Logrono, "Carmen Calvo,
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Pinturas.
entre la arqueologia y la pintura,"
April 27-May 27, 1979. Catalogue
Diario 16 (Madrid), May 16, 1979,
p. 24
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuel Garcia i Garcia, "Notas

Newspapers and Periodicals sobre pintura valenciana de los

la

Luis Manez, "Carmen Calvo y Mi- setenta," Batik (Barcelona), no. 50,
quel Navarro," Dos y Dos (Valen- July-August 1979, pp. 43-45
cia], no. 27/28, November 28, 1976

R. Ventura Melia, "Avantguarda i

arqueologia," AVUI (Barcelona),

December 12, 1976

49
12.

Anthology. 1975
(Recopilacion)
Red clay on canvas mounted on
wood panel, 59 x 74%" (150 x 190
cm. I

Collection Enrique del Pozo

Parrado, Madrid

T^nim 1 ty n*rf 1 rTtimri nimti inrt rt

nmiumrrwm mimwi rrrnirr rrirr*
rmn mrr mm WO fYrrtmrrir. Tri-rrrrrj
yiriHrrrrrrnmim rirnrwrrmwit t nU

r^ # m r *r *m wwn rtwwi rr n
r fh wmita r
Rl Pi 5 h v 8 B m ww
h w * ,1
I in , m \mi
W ffirnitfnum^MMhffirfriirirvmrimr
r

50
13-

Anthology (Landscape). 1977

(Recopilacion jPaisajcl)
Painted white clay on canvas
mounted on wood panel, 59 x "
74%
(150 x 190 cm.)
Collection The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Anonymous Gift

wmi$k
x

51
14-
Anthology Series. 1977

ISerie Recopilacion)
Painted ocher clay on canvas
mounted on wood panel, 59 x 74%"
(150 x 190 cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

52
IS-
Reconstruction Landscape Series.
1977
(Scrie Reconstruccion Paisaie)
Clay on canvas mounted on wood
panel, 33V2 x 46V2" (85 x 118 cm.)
Collection J. Sufiol, Barcelona

53
i6.

Anthology of Forms. 1979

(Recopilacion de foimas)
White clay on canvas, 51^ x 63%"
(130 x 162 cm.)
Private Collection, San Francisco

'

!
-
- y

W- . .:

/ ^
^
;f/'
<!
/o
-

J
jp. -> A .. Jf* fc ^ ^ ^
4

2 *
)

-}

y
->
8L* ^ 4 .
(
"*
*
I

N
> % -

f ^
r -
1 .
-
^ - /
>
> " -
s o 1 -
V '
I
1

^
'

# * {

f
'
if
'
I

-I

54
17-

Landscape Series. 1979

(Serie Paisajes)

Red clay on canvas, 33V2 x 33V2"

(85 x 85 cm.)
Collection the artist

W.

55
i8.

Coloied-Chalk Landscape. 1979

(Paisaje Tizas de Coloies)
Colored chalks on canvas mounted
on wood panel, 47I4 X47 4" (120 x !

120 cm.)
Collection J. Sunol, Barcelona

1 \ i

v -
ll
m

1
1* 1

1
*
f o

* * >**
m
.
.
*
ft


^ '
-
!
*
m
*
*

<
- m>
*
m


t

*
*
> m

*


(J y *
1 / mm m *r.
m I
1 * u
'

- %
m m .* * m
m - - *

ft
*
.

*

,m -
*
" -

56
19-

Colored-Chalk Landscape. 1979

(Paisaje Tizas de Coloies)
Colored chalks on canvas, 47VS x
4714" (120 x 120 cm.]
Collection Lambert, Brussels

.', 'I t j
_ .

* '..'. - '

-
- -

'

1
1 ? -
-_

* I

s '
1 -
1
/

v.
1
JiT.
1 _ 1
'.

57
 TERESA GANCEDO

Reality is the foundation of my plastic language. This reality is not objective,

but subjective and almost always transformed by the honest trickery that
recollection infuses into everything that happens to us.
I would like my works to be seen as fleeting, equivocal representations
of the world and of life. They are not meant to be critical or literal, but to
present a reality interwoven with memories of years, of names, of mystery, of
sorrow, of joys. Memory is also truth and life, another form of blood, in
the words of a Spanish poet.
In my current work there are four elements of central interest to me:
object, space, time and color.

The object, which I usually make myself, appears in various guises on the
canvas. Sometimes it is a faithful drawing of the object and sometimes it is
the object itself. I am attempting to treat and manipulate reality in an am-
biguous way, making it difficult to establish the boundaries between the rep-
resented object and the real object; this creates a profoundly tactile feeling.
Space is created, in the first place, as a cradle for all other elements,- my
intention is that this space and these elements communicate their identity in
a continual dialogue, in a bidimensional-tridimensional relationship.
Color is treated in the most sober manner possible. Only in the object do
Born in Leon (Castille), 1937 I attempt absolute fidelity of color. Throughout the surface of the painting an
Moved to Madrid, 1939; to important role is played by the gray tones, with their gradations, transpar-
Barcelona, i960 encies, etc.
Studied at Escola Massana, Into these elements objects, space, color I incorporate time. This is
Barcelona, 1967-69; Escuela Superior
shaped by the deterioration of the subject. The images used are always pet-
de Bellas Artes de San Jorge,
Barcelona, 1969-73 rified, volumetric, static. Mobility is represented, nevertheless: it is the mobil-

Lives in Barcelona ity created by the sequence of images in a space which is more or less defined.

58
SELECTED GROOT EXHIBITIONS
Barcelona, Prcmio international de
dibuio Inglada Guillot, November
1970
Barcelona, X Salon femenino del
arte actual,October 1971
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo,
Madrid, Salon international de
pintura feminina, June 1973
Barcelona, 20 Premio de Dibujo San
Jordi. April1974
Fundacio Gulbenkian, Lisbon, X1I1
Premio international de desenho
Joan Miro. November 1974.
Catalogue
Centre Culture! et Social Municipal,
Limoges, Evidence/ Apparence,
May r976
Galena Ponce, Mexico City, Los
realismos en Espaiia, 1976
Centre Culturel et Social Munici-
pal, Limoges, Paradis perdu:
Recherche d'identite, April-May
1977. Catalogue
Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, JV
Encontros Internacionais de Arte,
August 1-12, 1977
Leon, Spain, IV Bienal del Realismo.
December t4, 1977-Tanuary 12, 1978
Galeria Victor Bailo, Zaragoza,
Ocho pintores catalanas, April 10-
30, 1978. Catalogue
Paris, 2>) e
Salon de la ieune peinture.
May 16-June 15, 1978. Catalogue
Les Gemeaux Centre d'Action
Culturelle, Paris (Sceaux), Fievre
Froide, May 1978. Catalogue
Palma de Mallorca, Homenaie loan
Miro. July-August 1978
SELECTED ONE-WOMAN EXHIBITIONS
Sala Provincial, Leon, Spain,
December t972
Sala de la Cultura de la Caja de
Ahorros Provincial, Pamplona,
June-July L973
Sala Ausias March, Barcelona,
November 1974
Galeria Ovidio, Madrid, December
is, 1 97s -January 8, 1976
Galeria Val i 30, Valencia, June 2-30,
r976. Catalogue
Galeria Ciento, Barcelona, Teresa
Gancedo Obra sobre papel, Feb-
ruary 16-March 12, 1977. Catalogue
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Teresa
Gancedo Oleos y dibuios, October
4-November 9, 1977
Sala Pelaires, Palma de Mallorca,
Teresa Gancedo Obra reciente.
May 24-June 15, 1978
Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes,
Lisbon, July 14-August 10, 1978.
Catalogue
Galeria Pepe Rebollo, Zaragoza,
Teresa Gancedo Pinturas, February
S-24, 1979. Catalogue
Galeria Cop-D'ull, Lerida, Spain,
Pintura y dibuio, March 9-30, 1979
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo,
Seville,Teresa Gancedo: Discurso
sobre la realidad (Obra realizada
entre 1976-1979J, May 15-June 9,
1979. Catalogue
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Newspapers and Periodicals
Daniel Giralt-Miracle, "Teresa
Gancedo," AVU1 (Barcelona), Feb-
ruary 2, 1977
Teresa Blanch, "La imaginada
realidad de Teresa Gancedo," Batik
(Barcelona), no. 31, February 1977,
pp. 2*5-26
Ana Moix, "Teresa Gancedo: La
objetividad, lo real imaginario y lo
simbolico," Vindication feminista
(Barcelona), no. ro, April 1, 1977
M. A. Garcia Vinolas, "Teresa
Gancedo," Pueblo (Madrid), Octo-
ber 12, 1977
Maria Teresa Casanelles, "Teresa
Gancedo y sus ciclos vitales," Hoja
del Lunes (Madrid), October 17,
1977
Enrique Azcoaga, "Teresa
Gancedo," Blanco y Negro (Madrid),
no. 3417, October 26, 1977
Raul Chavarri, "Teresa Gancedo,"
TG (Madrid), December 1977, pp.
54-55
Felix Guisasola, "Teresa Gancedo:
lo no esencial," Guadalimar
(Madrid), December 1977, pp. 9^92
Manuel Barbosa, "Teresa Gancedo
artista espanhola," Pagina Um
(Lisbon), February 10, 1978
Jaime Nicolau, "Iconografia de
vida y la muerte," Diario de
la
Mallorca. June 2, 1978
Mariano Planells, "Teresa Gancedo:
Vision y participacion," Batik
(Barcelona), no. 42/43, May-June
1978, P- 65
Mario de Oliveita, "Teresa Gancedo
(pintora espanhola) e o realismo
ecologico," O
Pais (Lisbon), August
4, 1978
"Exposiciones en 'Pepe Rebollo,'
'Gambrinus' y Hogar Navarro,"
Amanecer (Zaragoza), February 10,
1979, P- 5
A. A., "Galeria Pepe Rebollo: Teresa
Gancedo," Heraldo de Aragon
(Zaragoza), February 11, 1979
Books
Raul Chavarri, Artistas contempo-
rdneas en Espana, Madrid, 1976
Gillo Dorfles, Ultimas tendencias
del arte de hoy, Barcelona, 1976
Gloria Moure, "The Specificity and
Dead-end of Spanish Artistic Crea-
tion," Art actuel: Skira annuel,
Geneva, 1979, pp. 142-144
59
The Dried Branch. 1977
(El tronco seco)
Oil and objects on canvas mounted
on wood panel, 24% x i8Vs"
(62.5 x 46 cm.|
Collection Font Diaz, Barcelona

60
The Loved Ones. 1977
(Los seres queridos)
Oil and objects on canvas mounted
on wood panel, 24% x 18^"
(62.5 x 46 cm.)
Collection J. Carrillo de Albornoz,
Granada

61
Discourse on Reality. 1978
fDiscuiso sobre la lealidad)
Mixed media and objects on canvas,
44% x 6iYs" (112 x 156 cm.)
Collection J. Sunol, Barcelona

62
23-
The Wounded Flower. 1979
(La Florherida)
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 74% x
72 Vs" (190 x 184 cm.)
The Solomon R.
Collection
Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Anonymous Gift

j
/&
< v,

63
24a. 24b.
The 'Wreath. 1979 The Wreath. 1979
(La Corona) (La Corona)
Gouache on board, 24% x 24%" Oil on canvas, 51V6 x 76%"
[61 x 62 cm.) (130 x 195 cm.)
Collection the artist Collection the artist

Iff

(MBSBHMHM^H

64
25-
Relics I. 1979
(Reliquias 1)

Acrylic and oil on canvas, 5i>/8 x

42 Y>" (130 x 108 cm.)
Collection the artist

65
26.
Relics 11. 1979
(ReJiquias 11)

Acrylic and oil on canvas, 51V6 x

42 V2" (130 x 108 cm.)
Collection the artist

66
27.
Another Time, Another Space. 1979
(Otro tiempo, otro espacioj
Acrylic and oilon canvas, siVx x
63%" (!3 ox l62 cm.)
Collection the artist

67
MUNTADAS GINES SERRAN PAGAN

^ ^<is
Born in Barcelona, 1942 Born in Ceuta (Spain), 1949
Studied at Universidad de Barce- Studied at New York University,
lona, 1959-62; Escuela Tecnica x 973"76 (M.A. in Anthropology);

Superior Ingenieros Industriales, from 1977 The City University of

Barcelona, 1963-67 New York (currently Doctoral
Moved to United States, 1972 Candidate in Anthropology)
Since 1977 has worked at Center for Lives in New York
Advanced Visual Studies, Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge
Cambridge and
Lives in New York

68
PAMPLONA-GRAZALEMA:
THE RITUAL OF THE BULL IN SPAIN
Pamplona-Gzazalema is the result of a series of visual media and anthropolog-

icalworks done from 1975 to 1979. The social sciences and the visual arts are
combined in an interdisciplinary effort to study the symbolism of the bull in
Spain.Two feasts of the bull are considered: one celebrated in Pamplona in
honor of San Fermi'n, the other in Grazalema, to commemorate the day of
Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

The Bull, the Church and Spain

As a nation history, many cultural elements that are important
moves through
atone time gradually lose their significance and disappear. Some symbols die
along the way, new ones sprout up while other remain permanently. Thus, in
Spain many symbolically expressive rituals and fiestas have lasted for cen-
turies.

The fiesta of the bulls is the most important of these. The strength, cour-
age and sexual power attributed to the bull have won it a central place in
Mediterranean mythology. Spain is the only country that has preserved ves-
tiges of these rites and games in varied forms. And the imprint of the bull has
been reflected in her literature from ancient times to the present day.
and art

In a country where the Church has always been so influential, the exist-
ence of fiestas involving the bull side by side with Christian ritual is an
enormous contradiction. The Church which could not destroy the deeply
ingrained fiestas was forced to Christianize them and incorporate them into
the Christian calendar. This way, the local spirit of the people would not vio-
At the same time, the people could hold on to their identity
late its authority.

but within the structure of the Church. Within the framework of the present-
day bullfight traces of sacrifices, holocausts and ancient rites linked to the
cult of the bull are preserved like the ruins of pagan temples under Christian
basilicas.

The Virgin's Bull

In the small hill townGrazalema a fiesta of the bull has been celebrated
of
for centuries: the fiesta one of the few in Spain that still preserves its orig-
is

inal purity. It commemorates the day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, whose
image is carried from the church to the accompaniment of hymns and music.
Men and women hail her as if she were the town beauty, as beautiful as the
Greek goddess worshipped by the ancient Grazalemans centuries ago. But in
addition to beauty incarnate Venus is now also Virgin and Mother. The
vitality of the people's religious feelings is most powerfully expressed in the
personal relationship with the Virgin, nurtured in these processions and
public acts, rather than in a dogmatic Church.

69
 On the day following the procession, a bull with a long rope knotted to
his horns is run through the streets. From balconies and windows women and
children look on, while men get close to the animal and run him, trying
furiously to make him charge. The animal fights for his life, charging wildly;
people scramble out of his way. Metaphorically, his power is taken over that
day by every man As man becomes animal, the beast becomes human.
in town.
With strength and courage gone, the bull becomes a tame animal; with this
symbolic death the fiesta ends.

In contrast to the religious and moral solidarity that prevails during the
procession, chaos reigns on the day the bull is run. There are no rules or laws
that day,- the freedom and the will of the people hold sway. The feast of the
Virgin celebrates femininity, the bull's celebrates masculinity. She stands for
motherly love, unity, purity and is part of a world of spiritual dimension.
But the bull symbolizes sexual vigor and bravery and he belongs to the mate-
rial life, the physical world of man.

The Bulls of San Fermin

Pamplona's bull festival is one of the most widely known in Spain. The San
Fermin festivities last for a week, and have been celebrated almost without
interruption since 1591.
Pamplona has a long bullfighting tradition. Hundreds of years before the
modern corrida came into being, bulls were run on a rope lead or with their
horns covered with tow and pitch and set on fire to celebrate special occa-
sions. Saints' feasts, the building of churches and even canonizations were
commemorated with bulls. Pamplona there have been churchmen who
In
raised brave bulls or even fought them, a bishop who was president of a
corrida, and priests who leapt into the ring. Bulls have been run not only in the
plazas or through the streets but in the churches as well. Priests have run
bulls and, on one occasion at least, Capuchin nuns ran a wild cow inside
their convent's walls.
The most fascinating part of Pamplona's fiesta is the running of the bulls
through the streets each morning. The city holds its The running lasts
breath.
only a few minutes but while it does, the bulls plow the streets, sowing panic
and inspiring valor. In the last fifty years, ten people were killed and some
3,600 wounded. Tourists from all over the world feel the special excitement
generated by the unique in the soul of Spain, that draws everyone to-
fiesta,

gether into a single body. The music, the shared bota of wine and the general
rejoicing intermingle in a dramatic dance with passion, danger and the
specter of death. In the last few years graffiti and political propaganda have
covered the walls of the houses and overshadowed or hidden the bullfight
posters and programs. In a budding political society the feast of San Fermin
has also created room for protest.

70
 Fiestas dedicated to the bull have endured in Spain because over the years
they infiltrated her culture in the areas of language, religion, economics, pol-
itics and social organization, leaving visible traces in the ideological structure.
These socio-cultural forms embedded in the local culture are preciselywhat
keeps the fiesta alive. The central purpose, then, of Pamplona-Giazalema has
not been to study the visual medium or the fiesta itself, but to relate it to
society and see how it has worked into the social units and became an integral
part of the world view and values of the people.

NOTES PARALLEL TO THE PROJECT

The project Pamplona-Giazalema is an installation of videotape, film and
slides, together with a book of texts and images. It is an attempt to approach

greater objectivity by combining distinct methodologies which give as com-

plete a vision as possible of the symbolism of the bull and what it represents
in Spain.
Over the past five years the visual conception and point of view of this
project has evolved through personal selection and reduction into two comple-
mentary presentations which have taken the following form:
Videotape a : fast medium. Images and sound symbolic and suggestive of
information as well as audio-visual references.
medium. Texts and graphic images which present the
Publication: a slow
background information with greater density.

Installation:

Two fifteen-minute tapes, one devoted to Pamplona, the other to Grazalema,

are run simultaneously on separate monitors. The juxtaposed material con-
trasts the following elements:
bull and people
silence and sound
color (red for Pamplona; green for Grazalema) and black and white
abstract and realistic images
The result is a visual, referential and symbolic body of work which is com-
plemented by the publication.

Publication:

Texts and images which place the project in a socio-anthropological frame-

work that includes references to the historical, economic and political con-
text; transcriptions of interviews and a conclusion in which the authors
present a critical assessment of the project and review the premises and
outcome of an interdisciplinary collaboration.

71
 Technical data:
Preparation time: June 1975-February 1980. Field work and filming in Pamp-
lona and Grazalema in July 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979.
Accumulated visual material: 4 hours of film; 22 hours of videotape; 2,000
slides.

Collaboration (field work and post-production help): John Barnett, Daniela

Tilkin, Manel Perez, Katya Furse, Lala Goma, Lopez Tavanazzi, Eugeni Bonet,
Mark Abate.
Post-production work: Film/Video Department, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge; Massachusetts School of Arts, Boston; Educational
Video Resources, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Acknowledgements: Comite Conjunto Hispano Norteamericano, Madrid;
Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,-
Galeria Vandres, Madrid; Spanish Tourist Office, New York, Promocion Artes
Plasticas e Investigacion Nuevas Formas Expresivas; Ministerio de Cultura.

72
MUNTADAS Alberta College of Art Gallery, Cal- Kassel, Documenta 6: The Last Ten
gary, Videonet, March 1979. Minutes (Part 11), June-October
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Catalogue 1977. Installation
Sala Lleonart, Barcelona, Machines, The Museum of Modern Art, New P.S. 1, New York, Yesterday, Today,
April 1963. Catalogue York, Video Viewpoints 1979, Sub- Tomorrow, April-May 1978.
Barcelona, Premi Joan Miro, 1964, jectivity/Objectivity: Private/ Installation
1967. Catalogues Public Information, April 1979 Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts In-
Barcelona, Salo de Maig, 1965, 1966, Museum Folkwang Essen, Video- stitute of Technology, Cambridge,
1967. Catalogues wochen Essen '79, November- On Subjectivity, December 21-23,
Buenos Aires, Arte de sistemas 11. December 1979. Catalogue 26-29, 1978. Book and video
1972 Boston Film/Video Foundation,
SELECTED ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS Between the Lines. February 1979.
Pamplona, Encuentros, 1972. Cat-
alogue Galeria Vandres, Madrid, October Video
Banyoles, Spain, Informacio d'Art 1971. Catalogue Espai B5-125, Universitat Auto-
Concepte. February 1973. Catalogue Galeria Rene Metras, Madrid, Jan- noma, Barcelona, Dos Colors, No-
uary 1973 vember 1979. Installation
Colegio de Arquitectos, Valencia,
Cuatro Elementos, May 1973. Trav- Galeria Vandres, Madrid, December
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
eled to Galeria ]uana de Aizpuru, 12, 1974-January 3, 1975. Catalogue
Seville, lune. Catalogue Stefanotti Galery, The Video Dis- On the artist
Museu de Art Contemporanea da tribution Inc., New York, April 2-3, Newspapers and Periodicals
Universidade de Sao Paulo, Pro- 1975 Alexandre Cirici, "Antonio Mun-
spective 74. August 1974. Catalogue Internationaal Cultured Centrum, tadas Part tactil," Serra D'Or
i

Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Lau- Antwerp, November 13-December (Barcelona), September 1971, pp.
sanne, Impact Video An, October 12, 1976. Catalogue 63-65
1974. Catalogue Anthology Film Archives, New Maria LIuisa Borras, "Panorama de
Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de York, February 2S-26, 1977 Novisimos Catalanes," Destino
Paris, Art/Video Confrontation 74, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, (Barcelona), no. 1791, 1971
November-December 1974. Bars. April 15-May 15, 1977 "Muntadas: La Actividad Concept-
Catalogue
The Museum of Modern Art,New ual," Tropos (Madrid), no. 7/8,
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, York, Projects: Video XVIII, May May 1973, pp. 99-104
Artists Videotapes, January 1975. 4-9, 1978 JoseMaria Marti Font, "Cadaques
Catalogue
Vancouver Art Gallery, March 16- Canal Local," Diario de Barcelona,
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, April 16, 1979. Catalogue August 1974
Caracas, Arte de Video, April 1975.
Juan M. Bonet, "Los Medios y su
Catalogue SELECTED SPECIAL PROJECTS Uso Alternativo a proposito de
Galeria Wspolzesna, Warsaw, Muntadas," Solucion (Madrid),
Sztuka Video I Socjologiczna, June
Automation House, New York,
Confrontations. April 1974. February 1975
1975. Catalogue
Installation Guy Dumur, "Contre l'art mar-
IX Biennale de Paris. October 1975. chandise," Le Nouvel Obscrvateur,
Galeria Cadaques, Cadaques Canal
Catalogue June 1975
Local. July 1974. Video
Venice, Biennale lnternazionalc Alexandre Cirici, "Muntadas: Cada-
C.A.Y.C, Buenos Aires, The Last
d'Arte. Spagna: Vanguarda Artistica, ques Canal Local," Phis Moins Cero
Ten Minutes (Part I). March 14-20,
Reaha Sociale, June-October 1976. (Genval, Belgium), no. 10, Septem-
1976. Video
Catalogue ber 1975
Venice, Biennale lnternazionalc
Kassel, Documenta 6, June-October Bernard Teyssedre, "Le Bal des
d'Arte: N./S./E./W.. June-October
1977. Catalogue Copieurs," Le Nouvel Observateur,
1976. Installation
Graz, Austria, Mediart, October September 1975
Galeria Ciento, Barcelona, Barce-
1978. Catalogue
lona Distrito Uno. October 197(1.
Video

73
Victoria Combalia, "Les avant-
gardes en Espagne," Art Press
(Paris),no. 22, January-February
1976, pp. 26-27
Francisco Rivas, "Muntadas hacia
una estrategia de los medios," El
Pais (Madrid), October 1976
lose Maria Marti Font, "Alternativa
a la T.V.," Viejo Topo (Barcelona),
November 1976
Dany Bloch, "L'Art comme provo-
cation," Info Altitudes (Paris), no.
14, January 1977
"Last Ten Minutes," Flash An (Mi-
lan), no. 76/77, July/August 1977,
p. 41
Wulf Herzogenrath, "Der
Zundstoff: Video kiinnte das In-
tendanten
Fernsehen ablcisen,"
Kunst Forum, no. 5, August 1977
Amon, "El Ultimo Ex-
Santiago
periment de Antonio Muntadas,"
El Pais (Madrid), September 1977
Gloria Moure, "Interview: Van-
guardias Artisticas y Realidad
Semiologica," Destino (Barcelona),
no. 2112, March 1978
Victor Ancona, "Antonio Munta-
das: from Barcelona to Boston,"
Videography, no. s, May
S5-S8
Richard Simmons, "Video Art:
Spain and Syracuse, N.Y.," Televi-
sions, no. 4, 1978
"About Invisible Mechanisms,"
Visions (Boston), no. 2, February
1979
Anne Bray and Ferol Breyman,
"Muntadas: Personal/Public Con-
versation," Video Guide (Van-
couver), June 1979
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, "Reading
'Between the Lines.' " Centerfold
(Toronto), no. 5, July 1979
Maria Teresa Blanch, "Muntadas
il'alternativa dels mitjans," AVU1
(Barcelona), October 21, 1979, p. 2
Alexandre Cirici, "L'environament
invisible d'Antoni Muntadas."
Sena D'Or (Barcelona), October
1979
74
Books GINES SERRAN PAGAN
Simon Marchant, Del arte objetual SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
al arte conceptual. Madrid, 1972
By Serran Pagan
Raul Chavarri, La Pintura Espanola Publications
Actual, Madrid, 1973
"Los factores sociologico y psico-
Victoria Combalia, La Poetica de lo
logico y el estudio antropologico de
Neutro. Barcelona, 197s
los simbolos," Arbor (Madrid), no.
William Dyckes, ed., Contemporary 362, 1976, pp. 27-40
Spanish Art, New York, 1975, p. 153
"Notas de Antropologia Simbolica
Guy Dorfles, Ultimas tendencias
en Africa: Poder y estructura de los
del arte de hoy, Barcelona, 1976 simbolos," Revista Internacional
Beryl Korot and Dora Schneider, de Sociologia (Madrid), nos. 18-20,
eds., Video Art. New York, 1976 1976, pp. 109-121
Achille Bonito Oliva, Europe- SocialAnthropology in Andalousia,
America: The Different Avant- M.A. Thesis, Department of An-
latente Gardes, Rome, 1976 thropology, New York University,
Horst Wackerbarth, Kunst und 1076
Medien. Kassel, 1977 "El Ritual delToro en Espana: Al-
Art Artist the Media, Graz, 1978 gunos errores de analisis y metodo,"
Kane, ed., Video 80. Rome, 1979 Revista de Estudio Sociales (Ma-
drid), no. 20, 1977, pp. 87-99
Gloria Moure, "The Specificity and
Dead-end of Spanish Artistic Cre- "Educacion y Antropologia Social:
ation," Art actuel: Skira annuel.
Notas sobre la relation existente
entreel sistema educativo y los
Geneva, 1979, pp. 142-144
organismos que ejercen el poder,"
By the artist
Arbor (Madrid), nos. 391-392, 1978,
pp. 65-80
Publications
"Dimensiones politicas del cambio
Actividades 1. Galena Vandres, social," Revista Internacional de
1978, pp.
Madrid, 1972 Sociologia (Madrid), no. 27, 1978,
Actividades ll-Ul. Galeria Vandres, pp. 417-439
Madrid, 1976 "ElToro de la Virgen v la industria
Emisio Recepio (Postales). Art textilen Grazalema: Transforma-
Enlla, 1976 tion economica y cambios en el
On Subjectivity. Visible Language mundo simbolico de un peublo
Workshop and Center for Advanced andaluz," Revista Espatiola dc In-
Visual Studies, Cambridge, Massa- \c\tigaciones Sociologicas (Madridl,
no. s, 1979, pp. 119-135
chusetts, 1978
September 11.19^ 4 /September ir. "La fabula de Alcala y la realidad
t978. Neon de Suro, Palma de historica en Grazalema: Replantca-
Mallorca, 1978 miento del primer estudio de An-
tropologia Social en Espana,"
Yesterday /Today /Tomorrow,
Revista Espanola de Investigaciones
Urban Landscape Series, The Insti-
Socioldgicas (Madrid), 1979
tute for Urban Resources Inc.. New
"Cultura local e ideologia politica:
York, 1971.)
Anarquismo v Guerra Civil en
Grazalema," Arbor (Madridl. urn
 28.
Lectures and Presentations Pamplona-Grazalema. 1975-80
Galena Vandres, Madrid, "Intro- Installation: videotape, film, slides
duccion al Proyecto Pamplona- and related material
Grazalema," 1977 Publication: texts, photographs and
Universidad de Sevilla, "Antro- graphics
pologia en Grazalema," 1977
Casa de Espana,
Ci'rculo Cultural,
New York, "Simbolismo del toro
en Espana," 1978
The City University of New York,
"The Bull of the Virgin and the
Textile Industry of Grazalema,"
1978

75
 I

76
Grazalema y su Toro

L ' i t.. .... M I l.lll

77
78
 L

as-*- "*-

79
 r*~*m JB?r*\"~?P"

egin
Sanfermines rotoj
V''.'

it
80
8l
 MIQUEL NAVARRO

My art consists, fundamentally, in constructing: I construct objects and

spaces (environments, architectures and sculptures). My intention is to confer

on my work connotations that are atemporal, rational, historical, biographical.

The work is executed primarily in clay, although it could include any kind of
materials. Clay plays a major role because of its connections with the cultural
and industrial beginnings of our civilization. I would also like to add that my
work is a philosophical and therefore poetic investigation of the image itself.

.ffR

.
-

; '

<

Bom in Mislata (Valencia), 1945

Studied at Escuela Superior de Bel-

las Artes de San Carlos, Valencia

Began his career as a painter; since

1972 has devoted himself entirely
to sculpture
Lives in Mislata

82
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Circulo Universitario de Valencia,
Nucstro Yo. January 15-31, 1969
Galeria Val i 10, Valencia,
Pintores, April is, 1972
Centro de Arte M
1 1, Seville, Pintura
Espanola Actual. June 1974
Galerias Punto, Temps, Val i 30,
Valencia, EJs Altres 75 Anys de Pin-
tura Valenciana, April-July 1976.
Traveled in Spain
Galeria Ponce, Madrid, Cinco Ccr-
amistas, January-February 1977.
Catalogue
Caja de Ahorros de Alicante y Mur-
cia, Alicante, Alaminos, Alcolea.
Criado, Lootz, Navarro. Navarro,
Baldweg. Serrano. Utray. Valcarcl.
Medina. March 1977. Catalogue
Galeria Sen, Madrid, Seis Artistas
Valencianos, October 28-November
22, 1977
Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin, Kata-
lanische Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts,
June 25-August 23, 1978. Catalogue
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
Hornenaje a Joseph Cornell. Decem-
ber 20, 1978-January 15, 1979
ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS
Galeria Tassili, Oviedo [with Ra-
mirez Blanco], 1972
Sala de Arte de la Caja de Ahorros
Municipal de Pamplona (with
Molina Ciges], May 14-22, 1973
Galeria Val i 30, Valencia [with Ra-
mirez Blanco], Tune 12, 1973
Colegio de Arquitectos de Valencia
y Murcia, Valencia, La Ciudad, No-
vember 18-December 3, 1974
Galeria Buades, Madrid, La Ciudad,
March 17. 1975. Catalogue
Galeria Temps, Valencia [with Car-
men Calvo], November rfi-Decem-
ber id, 197(1. Catalogue
Galeria Buades, Madrid, February Eduardo Alaminos, "Miquel Nav-
22, r977. Catalogue arro," Artes Pldsticas (Barcelona),
no. irt, March-April, 1977, pp. 71-72
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
November 22-December 24, 1977 Fernando Huici, "Seis artistas valen-
Once cianos," El Pais (Madrid), Novem-
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Novem-
ber 3, r977, p. 26
ber 15-December 15, 1979- Catalogue
Victoria Combalia, "Una nueva
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY generation valenciana. Arqueologfa
y autoreflexion de una pratica,"
Newspapers and Periodicals
Batik (Barcelona), no. 45, November
Trinidad Simo, "Miquel Navarro y 1978, pp. i8-t9
la Ciudad Fantastica," Las Provin- Victoria Combalia, Alicia Suarez
cias (Valencia), November 24, 1974 and Merce Vidal, "Tot sobre les set-
Jose Luis Segui, "Miquel Navarro en manes catalanes a Berlin," Artilugi
el Colegio de Arquitectos," Record (Barcelona), no. 4, 1978, pp. 1-4
(Valencia), November 1974 Manuel Garcia i Garcia, "Notas
F.Samaniego, "Miquel Navarro y su sobre pintura valenciana de los
la
replanteamiento de la Escultura," setenta," Batik (Barcelona), no. 50,
Informaciones (Madrid), March 31, July-August 1979, pp. 43-45
1975, p. 16 Antonio Bonet Correa, "Prodigos y
Jose Castro Arines, "Dos Nuevas maravillas de Miquel Navarro,"
Ciudades," Informaciones (Madrid), Artequia (Madrid), no. 51, Novem-
April 3, 1975, p. 14 ber 30, r979, pp. r8-i9
Mercedes Lazo, "Al filo de la Cer-
Book
amica," Cambio 16 (Madrid], no.
t76, April 2r, 1975, p. 97 Manuel Mas, ed., Gran Enciclopedia
de la Region Valenciana. Valencia,
Luis Mafiez, "Carmen Calvo y
1972, vol. VII, p. 303
Miquel Navarro," Dos y Dos (Valen-
cia), no. 27/28, November 28, 1976
Melia R. Ventura, "Avantguarda i
argueologia," AVUI (Barcelona),
December 12, 197(1
Eduardo Chavarri Andujar, "Dos
Vertientes de la Pintura Valenciana:
El Maestro Furio y el Tandem Car-
men Calvo Miquel Navarro," Las
Provincias (Valencia), December 21,
1976
Juan M. Bonet, "Corto viaje a Va-
lencia y a su pintura," El Pais (Ma-
drid), December 23, 1976
Jose Garneria, "Carmen Calvo y
Miquel Navarro," Artes Pldsticas
(Barcelona), no. 14, December 1976,
p. 48
Santiago Amon, "Miquel Navarro,"
El Pais (Madrid), February 24, 1977,
p. 22
83
29-
Cylinder. 1974-77
(Cilindro)
Plasterand stoneware, 9% x 17V2 x
15-%" (15 X44.5 X40cm.)
Collection the artist

84
30.
Construction. 1976-77
(Construction)
Plaster, terra-cotta and stoneware,
14.1/2 x 17V2 x 15%" (37 x 44.5 x
40 cm.)
Collection the artist

85
31-
Chimney. 1978-79
(Chimenea)
Stoneware and electrical apparatus,
39 /sX 39-y8 xi5%" (100 x 100x40
3

cm.)
Private Collection, Madrid

8fi
3*.
Chapel and Cosmos. 1978
(Capilla y cosmos)
Stoneware and terra-cotta mounted
on wood panel, 43V2 x 31V2 x 2V2"
(nox 80 x 6.5 cm.)
Private Collection, Paris

87
I..;..: 1
 I

33-
Pyramid. 1977-79
(Pyramide)
Stoneware, terra-cotta and sand,
24% x 237 x 106V2" (63 x 600 x 270
cm.
Collection the artist
34-
Prickly Pear. 1979
(Figa Palera)
Terra-cotta mounted on wood
panel, 59 * 4i% x 3V2" (15 x 105 x
9 cm.)
Collection the artist

35-
Hieroglyphic. 1979
(leroglifico)
Terra-cotta mounted on wood
panel, 59x59x2%" (150 x 150 x
7 cm.)
\
Collection the artist

90
s^i

91
 36.
Ball-tipped Horns. 1979
(Bou embolat)
Terra-cotta mounted on wood
panel, 59 X4i% x 3%" (150 x 105 x
10 cm.)
Collection J. Sufiol, Barcelona

37-
Beginning 1. 1979
(Oiigen 1)

Terra-cotta mounted on wood

panel, S9 x 59 x iVe," (150 x 150 x
8 cm.)

Collection the artist

92
1

93
44
38.
Beginning 2. 1979
(Origen 2)

Terra-cotta mounted on wood

panel, 59 x 4i 3/8 x 2%" (150 x 105 x
7 cm.)
Collection Lambert, Brussels

39-
Cactus. 1979
Stoneware, terra-cotta and sand,
ioVS x 19% x 19%" (26 x 50 x 50
cm.]
Collection the artist

40.
Cosmos. 1979
Stoneware, terra-cotta and black
sand, lYs x 19% x r 9% " (8.5 x 50 x
50 cm.)
Collection the artist

95
 GUILLERMO PEREZ VILLALTA

The act of artistic creation is, for me, completely fused with my own life which
is, without a doubt, my only oeuvre. What I see, where I am, my reading, music
and travels form part of it. I do not attempt to clarify anything. Chaos itself,

confusion or contradiction are for me fundamental. Therefore all possibilities

my work: polystylism is my technique. Abstraction,

overlap and interweave in
mannerism, the baroque, and even pompier art, can serve as an Ariadne's
thread for this labyrinth. It is only a matter of letting time pass.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Galeria Laietana, Barcelona, El Mar

y la Pintura, May 1978
Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden,
Spanskt. November 10-December Galeria Ponce, Madrid, Pintores
9,
Marginales, June 2-30, 1978
1973
Galeria Buades, Madrid, Exposition Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
Inaugural Galeria Buades, Novem- Homenaje a Joseph Cornell. De-
ber 1973 cember 20, 1978-January 15, 1979
Galeria Ovidio, Madrid, El Lapiz
Galeria Buades, Madrid, Sesiones de
senala al Asesino. March 1979
Trabajo: El Taller/La Pintura/El
Museo. February 6-19, 1974 Galeria Estampa, Madrid, Interiores,
June 1979
Casa Damas, Seville, Siete Pintores,
March T974 Galeria Ruiz Castillo, Madrid, Obra
sobre papel, June 1979
Centro de Arte M
n, Seville, Pin-
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
tura Espanola Actual, June 1974
Dibujos de Artistas Espanoles Con-
Museo Provincial, Cadiz, Arte
tempordneos, July-September 1979
Cadiz, June 1974
Born in Tarifa, 1948 Galeria Juana Mordo, Madrid, 19X0,
Self-taught as a painter; began
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
October 10-November 18, 1979
painting in 1965 A los 50 alios del Surrealismo, Jan-
uary 9-31, 1975
Studied architecture from 1966 ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS
Casa Damas, Seville, El Cepillo,
Lives in Madrid Galeria Amadis, Madrid, January 8-
March-April 1975
20, 1972. Catalogue
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Vandres
Galeria Trajano, Seville, Relatione^
1970-1975, December 11, I97s-Jan-
entre Imdgenes y Algunos Orna-
uary 10, 1976
mentos. April 8, 1972
Barcelona, Arte-Expo. November
Galeria La Mandragora, Malaga,
6-14, 1976
October 27-November i<;, 1972
Galeria El Coleccionista, Madrid,
Siete Pintores en torno a la Ciudad.
Galeria Daniel, Madrid, March 2-

24. 1973
November 1976
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
Provincial Museum of Modern Art,
Hyogo, Japan, Exposition de Pintura
November 27-December 18, 1973

Espanola dcsde el Renacimiento Galeria Buades. Madrid, March 16-

hasta nuestros Dias, 1976. Traveled April 6, 1974
to Metropolitan Museum of Art, Galeria Vandres, Madrid, April 27-
Tokyo,- Kitakyushu Municipal Mu- May 22, 1976. Catalogue
seum of Art

96
Galeria Buades, Madrid [with Mariano Navarro, "Imagen pu-
Chema Cobo], March 22-April 17, blica/imagenes privadas," Ozono
1977. Catalogue (Madrid), no. 20, May 1977, pp.
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, October 46-48
g-November 10, 1979. Catalogue Fernando Huici, "En el Lugar del
Recuerdo," Zoom (Madrid), no. 6,
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY June 1977
Newspapers and Periodicals Fernando Huici, "Guillermo Perez
Villalta," El Pais (Madrid), October
Juan de Hix [Juan M. Bonet], "Las
n, 1979, P- 27
Mitologi as Diversas de Perez
Villalta," El Correo de Andalucia Miguel Logrono, "Fray Angelico,
(Seville), April 22, 1972, p. 17 Perez Villalta," Diario 16 (Madrid),
October 17, 1979
"Guillermo Perez Villalta en la Sala
Mandragora," El Sur (Malaga), No- Santos Amestoy, "Perez Villalta:
vember 17, 1972, pp. 12-17
salutation al optimista," Arteguia
(Madrid), no. 50, October 30, t979,
Carlos Marrero, "Guillermo Perez
pp. 29-30
Villalta," Bellas Artes (Madrid), no.
33, May 1974, pp. 50-51
Miguel Fernandez-Braso, "Perez
Villalta: el nuevo realismo espa-
Juan Pedro Quinoneros, "En busca
nol," Guadalimar (Madrid), no. 45,
de un Nuevo Arte Mediterraneo,"
October 1979, pp. 48-51
Informaciones (Madrid), May 11,
1976 Felix Guisasola, "La figuration hoy:
Perez Villalta," Sdbado Grdfico
Juan M. Bonet, "Perez Villalta, en
(Madrid), November 7, 1979, p. 47
una posible generacion," El Pais
(Madrid), May 16, 1976, p. 23
Maria Teresa Blanch, "G. Perez
Villalta, revision y audacia," Batik
Francisco Rivas, "Perez Villalta:
unas Nuevas 'Senoritas de Avig-
(Barcelona), no. 51, November 1979,
pp. 64-65
non'?" Batik (Barcelona), May 1976,
pp. 16-17 Books
Jose Marin-Medina, "Perez Villalta:
Raul Chivarri, La Pintura Espahola
de la libertad a voluntad de poder,"
Actual, Madrid, 1973, p. 415
Gazeta del Arte (Madrid), no. 79,
June 6, 1976, pp. 16-17 Simon Marchan Fiz, Del arte ob-
jectual al arte conceptual 1960-1974,
Eduardo Alaminos, "Guillermo Pe-
Madrid, 1974, p. 337
rez Villalta: ;un trfptico, un esce-
nario, un retrato?," Artes Pldsticas V. Bozal and T. Llorens, eds., Es-
(Barcelona), no. 9, June 1976, pp. 25- pana. Vanguardia artistica y reali-
27
dad social: 1936-1976, 1976, pp.
182-184
Fernando Savater, "Discretion y
prodigio en Guillermo Perez Vil-
lalta," Ozono (Madrid), no. 10, June
1976, p. 59
Juan M. Bonet, "Chema Cobo y G.
Perez Villalta," EI Pais (Madrid),
April 7, 1977, p. 17
Juan Antonio Aguirre, "1967-77
Primera Parte," Bellas Artes (Ma-
drid), no. 56, April 1977, pp. 50-51

97
 Jkmo 9am. VMa

98
 "

41-
Sun Entering a Drafty Room. 1978
(Solentiando en una habitation
con coirientes de aiie)
Acrylic on canvas, 55% x 43 \4
(140 x no cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

42.
Distance is Foigetf ulness. 1978
(La Distancia es el olvido)
Acrylic on canvas, 55V6 x 4314"
(140 x rro cm.]
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

99
43-
The Annunciation or The Meeting.
1978
(La Anunciacion o El Encuentio)
Acrylic on canvas, 3 panels, 39% x
39%" (roo x 100 cm.) 39% x 7%"
;

(100x20 cm.) 39% x 39y8" (100 x

;

100 cm.)
Private Collection, Madrid
44- 45-
The Studio. 1979 In Octu oculi. 1979

(El Taller) Acrylic on canvas, 55% x 70%"

Acrylic on canvas, 70% x 70%" (140 x 180 cm.)
(180 x 180 cm.) Collection the artist
Collection J. Sunol, Barcelona

103
4 6.
Ecstasy During the Siesta. 1979
(Extasis en la siesta)

Acrylic on canvas, 39% x 39%"

(100 x 100 cm.)
Collection J.
Sunol, Barcelona

104
los
 JORGE TEIXIDOR

Born in Valencia, 1941

Studied at Escuela Superior de Bellas
Artes de San Carlos, Valencia
1959-64
Juan March Foundation Grant to
work in New York, 1979-80
Lives in Valencia

106
I began the white series of 1977 for reasons of method. I had begun to sense
too much facility in my use of color, which I wanted to avoid. As I had hoped
but not expected, the result was an affirmation of the pictorial act. The can-
vases became limit-paintings, as the emphasis shifted from the idea of a par-
ticular work to the act of painting itself. The process of execution conveyed
and respected pictorialism in its own language. In a deliberate way I worked
as much on the absence of color as on the minimal and concise formal space
in which it acted. Because each painting evolved from the previous one and
forecast the next, the series had a unified appearance.
The series of white paintings ended for the same reasons that it began.
I took up color again, or more precisely, I introduced scales of colors. The se-

lection of each scale was not so important as the manner in which I worked
within it. The horizontal bands across the width of the canvas responded to
an anonymous method, which could not be modified or could only be

minimally modified by action. At the same time, once the overall color was
chosen for these virtually monochrome pictures, there were still slight dif-
ferences in value and contrast. The use of yellow in the series was deliberate.
Undoubtedly, every color has a connotative character, and it is commonly
held that there are certain psychoanalytic or cultural reasons for this. Thus
it is said that green represents hope and that red represents passion and even

the political ideology of the left. My choice of yellow was not motivated by
ideological considerations or popular beliefs. Cultural connections, however,
could be deduced from the series (as in some of the pictures based on the
Mimosa of Bonnard), as well as psychological interpretations. The use of
yellow was important to me in that it represented my decision to accept color
again after its absence in the white series. Also, yellow is different from other

colors because of its relative neutrality. This color was sometimes replaced by
a scale of violets.
My interest in American abstract painting of the last three decades con-
tinued throughout these last two series. Occasionally there has even been a
formal similarity. The attitude toward the act of painting, my recognition of
the consequences of this act, the theoretical reduction and the supremacy of
color as a specific language have been (in my own interpretation of the phe-
nomenon and in a cultural context) the foundations on which I have been
building my formulations for the last five years.

107
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Galeria Edurne, Madrid, Nueva
Generation, 1967
Galeria Eurocasa, Madrid, Antes
del Arte, 1968
Colegio de Arquitectos, Bilboa,
Mente IV, 1969
Galeria AS, Barcelona, Antes del
Arte, 1969
Galeria La Pasarella, Seville, Antes
del Arte: Serie Matemdticas, 1970
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
Homenaje a Marcel Duchamp, 1971
Granollers, Spain, Arte /oven, 1971
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo,
Seville,Arte valenciano actual, 1972
Sala Gaspar, Barcelona, Homenaie a
Joan Miro, 1973
Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden,
Spanskt, November 10-December
1973
Galeria Buades, Madrid, ro Abstrac-
ters, July 1975. Catalogue
Galeria Ponce, Mexico City, 22
Artistas Catalanes, r97s
Galeria Durango y Zaragoza,
ladolid, Spain, Broto, Grau, Leon,
Teixidor y Tena, February 3-14, 1976
Galerias Punto, Temps. Val i 30,
Valencia, Els Altres 75 Anys de Pin-
tura Valenciana, April-July 1976.
Traveled in Spain
Venice, Biennale Internazionale
d'Arte, Spagna: Vanguarda Artistica,
Realta Sociale. June-October 1976.
Catalogue
Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Pin-
tura
I, 1976
Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin, Kata-
lanische Kunst des 20. lahrhunderts,
June 2s-August 23, T978. Catalogue
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
Homenaje a Cornell. December 20,
1978-January 15, 1979
Musee d'Art et d'Industries, Saint-
Etienne, France, Impact 3, 1978
Centro Cultural de los EE. UU.,
Madrid. Pintura abstracta, T979
108
SELECTED ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS
Sala Mateu, Valencia, February 1966
Galeria Edurne, Madrid,
1968. Catalogue
Galeria Daniel, Madrid,
rr-December 4, 1970
Galeria Grises, Bilboa, 1970
Galeria Val i 30, Valencia, March-
April 1971
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
October 1971
Galeria Honda, Cuenca, 1971
Galeria Sen, Madrid, October 3-30,
1972
Galeria Atenas, Zaragoza, 1972
Galeria Val i 30, Valencia, 1973
Galeria Temps, Valencia, September
24-October 20, 1974
Galeria Barbie, Barcelona, March-
9,
April 1975. Catalogue
Galeria Dach, Bilboa, October 15-
November 7, 1975
Galeria Vandres, Madrid,
4-29, 1975
Galeria Rua, Santander, Spain, 1975
Val-
Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Seville,
January 12-31, 1977
Galeria Vandres, Madrid,
ber-December 1977
Galeria Viciana, Valencia, Novem-
ber 22-December 1978. Catalogue
Galeria loan Prats, Barcelona, Jordi
Teixidor: Pinturas r<)i6-r^jg, May
1 5, 1979- Catalogue
Galeria Sa Pleta Freda, Son Servera,
July 14-August
3, 1979
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Newspapers and Periodicals
Raul Chavarri, Tres Comentarios
sobre Arte," Cuadernos Hispano-
americanos, no. 230, 1969, pp.
454-457
Juan Antonio Aguirre,
Desde 'las puertas' a las 'Aperspec-
tivas,'" El Correo de Andalucia
ville), December 3,
Allanza, "Conversaciones con Teixi-
dor," El Correo de Andalucia (Se-
ville), December 3, 1970, p. 19
March
Juan Hix (Juan M. Bonet] and Fran-
cisco Jordan [F. Rivas), Conversa-
November cion con Jorge Teixidor," El Correo
de Andalucia (Seville), October 9,
i97i,p. 13
Ricardo Bellevese, "Jordi Teixidor:
Reflexion en colores, sobre el len-
guaje," Las Provincias (Valencia),
September 25, 1974
Joaquin Dols, "Jordi Teixidor en
Galeria Barbie," Galeria (Barcelona),
no. 5, April 1975, pp. 61-62
Daniel Giralt-Miracle, "Jordi Teixi-
dor: De la estructura racional a la
estructura natural," Destino (Barce-
lona!, no. 1957, April 1975, pp. 34-35
Daniel Giralt-Miracle, "Naturaleza
y Artificio en la Obra de Jordi Teixi-
dor," Batik (Barcelona), no. 14, April
1975, pp. 14-15
Trinidad Simo, "Jorge Teixidor. La
November Soledad y la Esperanza: El Paso hacia
la poesia lirica/'Gaierfa (Barcelona),
no. 8, July-August 1975, pp. n-13
Damaso Santos Amestoy, "Jordi
Teixidor," Galeria (Barcelona), no.
Novem- n, December 11, 1975, p. 34
Juan M. Bonet, "Ilusiones de ten-
dencia. Pintura I en la Fundacio
Miro de Barcelona," El Pais
(Madrid!, November 7, 1976, p. 20
Ramon Torres Martin, "Monis
Mora, Teixidor y Manuel Sanchez,"
El Correo de Andalucia (Seville),
January 19, 1977, p. r3
Francisco Rivas, "Teixidor," El Pais
(Madrid), March 3, 1977, p. 24
Santiago Amon, "Teixidor: relation
y evocation de la luz," El Pais
(Madrid), November 24, 1977, p. 28
Fernando Huici, "lordi Teixidor en
el bianco," Batik (Barcelona), no. 37,
November 1977, p. 41
"J. Teixidor:
Pancho Ortuna and Francisco Rivas,
"Conversation con Jordi Teixidor,"
(Se-
Arteguia (Madrid), no. 32, December
1970, p. 19
1977, P- 50
"Teixidor," Guadalimar (Madrid),
no. 27, December 1977, p. 90
Manuel Garcia, "EI ritual de Jorge
Teixidor," Valencia Semanal
(Valencia), December 17, 1978, p. 37
Hilton Kramer, "Painters and
Politics in the New Spain," The
New York Times, June 3, 1979, pp.
D 1, D 27. Reprinted as "Contrasts
in Barcelona: Two Promising Paint-
ers," International Herald Tribune
(London), June 16-17, 1979, P- 9
Aurora Garcia, "Jordi Teixidor: una
poetica del silencio," Batik
(Barcelona), no. 50, June 1979, pp.
50-51
Javier Rubio Navarro, "Jordi Teixi-
dor y Geraldo Delgado, en Barce-
lona," El Pais (Madrid), July 5, 1979,
p.29
Gloria Moure, "Jordi Teixidor:
autonomia del lenguaje pictorico,"
Cimal (Gandia), no. 4, July-August
1979, pp. 48-52

Books
Juan Antonio Aguirre, Arte Ultimo,
Madrid, 1969, pp. 49-53
Manuel Mas, ed., Gran Enciclopedia
de la Region Valenciana, Valencia,
1972, vol. II, p. 188
William Dyckes, ed., Contemporary
Spanish Art. New York, r975, pp.
54-55, IO4, T27
V. Bozaland T. Llorens, eds., Espana.
Vanguardia artistica y realidad:
1936-1976. Barcelona, 1976, pp. 167,
184-185

109
47-
Painting with Gray and Blue. 1975
(Pintuia con giis y azul)
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 70% x
51V&" (180 x 130 cm.)
Collection Gloria Kirby, Madrid
4 8.
Untitled. 1976
(Sin titulo)
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 70% x
51%" (180 x 130 cm.)
Lent by Galeria Vandres, Madrid
49-
Untitled. 1977
(Sin titulo)
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 70% x
51V6" (180 x 130 cm.)
Collection the artist
50.

Yellow Bands r. 1978

(Bandas amaiillas 1)
Oil on canvas, 70% x 5 1 Vfe" (180 x
130 cm.)
Collection Museo de Arte Abstracto,
Cuenca, Spain

"3
51-

Yellow Bands 2. 1978

(Bandas amarillas 2)
Oil on canvas, 70% x 5i !/s" (180 x
130 cm.)
Collection J. Sufiol, Barcelona

114
52.
Yellow Mimosa. 1978
(Amaiillo Mimosa)
Oil on canvas, 70% x 51%" (180 x
130 cm.)
Collection ]. Sunol, Barcelona

115
 DARIO VILLALBA

My work since 1964 has been concentrated on the image. I felt the need to
break with Spanish abstract informalism. My main focus is life and, more spe-
cifically, human beings. Fundamental realities. Non-intellectualized feelings.
In 1967 I began my encapsulations, which were shown at the Venice Bien-
nale. I enclosed man in transparent plexiglass chrysalids, freeing the picture
from the traditional support to locate it in three-dimensional space.
The image I invented emerges like a bubble, a second technological skin
that surrounds man and makes his inability to communicate more blatant.
During the last decade the content of my work has gradually become
more specific. Detachment coexists with emotiveness. In my most recent works
this dualism is fused. This leads me to a more vital and visible manual in-
volvement with the picture.
It is obvious that the verbal explanations I make of work that is as intense
as mine can only be detrimental to its interpretation.

Born in San Sebastian (Basque

region), 1939
Lived in Boston, 1950-54, 1958-62
Studied with Andre Lhote in Paris,
1958; Harvard University (Depart-
ment of Fine Arts), Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1958-62; Escuela
Superior de Bellas Artes de San
Fernando, Madrid, t962-64; Uni-
versidad de Madrid (Philosophy and
Letters)
Lives in Madrid

116
 1

SELECTED GROUr EXHIBITIONS Galeria Biosca, Madrid, 75 anos de Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris, Novem-
escultura en Espana, 1975 ber 1973-January 1974
World's Fair, New York, Pintura
Espanola Contempordnea, 1964 Provincial Museum of Modern Art Galeria Vandres, Madrid, April 24-
Hyogo, Japan, Exposicion de Pintura June 10, 1974. Catalogue
Galeria El Bosco, Madrid, Cinco
Espanola desde el Renacimineto Frankfurter Kunstverein, Dario
Pintores Espanoles en la VII Bienal
hasta nuestros Dias, 1976. Traveled Villalba: Objekte und Bilder, June
de Sao Paulo, 1965
to Metropolitan Museum of Art, 28-August n, 1974
Museo Espaiiol de Arte Contem- Tokyo; Kitakyushu Municipal
poraneo, Madrid, Tcstimonio 70, Kblner Kunstmarkt, Cologne,
Museum of Art
October 19-24, 1974
March 1970. Traveled to Cologne;
Ktinstlerhaus, Vienna, K45-
Montpellier; London; The LouisianaMuseum, Humlebaek,
International Fair of the Avantgarde,
Netherlands Denmark, January 18-February 23,
February 17-21, 1977
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1975. Catalogue
Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona,
Ghent, Jonge Spaanse Kunst, May Museum Boymans-van Beuningen,
Homenaie a Allende, 1977 Rotterdam, May 30-July 14, 1975
15-June 15, 1971
Fundacio Gulbenkian, Lisbon,
VII Biennale de Paris, September Basel, International Art Fair, ^4rt
PintuM Espanola, 1978
24-November r, 1971 6-75, June 18-24, !975
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Stadtmuseum Bochum, Germany,
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, La Paloma,
Madrid, Panorama 78, 1978
June 5 -July 31, 1972 September 12-October 19, 1975.
Musee d'Art Moderne (Musee
Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw, Con- Traveled to Heidelberger Kunst-
tcmporary Spanish Painting. May verein, February 22-March 21, 1976.
Experimental III|, Lausanne,
1979. Traveled to Narodnf Galerie, Catalogue
Implosion, November 3-December
Prague, June 21-July 22
10, 1972 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels,
Medellin, Colombia, Bienal de
XV Bienal Internacional de Sao Dario Villalba: Retrospective 1972-
Medellin. 1972
Paulo. October 3-November 9, 1979. T976, April 1-30, 1976. Catalogue
Catalogue
Musee dArt Moderne, Paris, Salon Galerie Gras, Vienna, January is-
de mai, 1972, 1973 February 12, 1977
SELECTED ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS
Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden, Ktinstlerhaus Wien, Vienna, Janu-
Spanskt. November 10-December Galeria El Bosco, Madrid, Cronica ary 15-February 6, 1977. Catalogue
de Palomares, 1967 Galeria Juana Mordo, Madrid,
9, 1973
Pavilion d'Exposition Bastille, Paris, Museo Espanol de Arte Contem- November 7-December 9, 1978

Premier Salon International d'Art poraneo, Madrid, May 1970 Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Dfln'o
Contemporain, January 26-February Venice, XXXV Biennale Inter- Villalba: Obra 1974-197.? Pintura,
3, 1974
nazionalc d'Arte, Spanish Pavilion, November 9-December 16, 1978.
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, June 24-October 25, 1970 Catalogue
Brussels, Art Espagnol d'Aujourd' Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, De-
cember SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
hui, June 6-July 14, 1974 2-13, 1970. Catalogue
Catalogue Studio C, Brescia, January 16-31, Newspapers and Periodicals
Haus der Kunst, Spanisches 1 97 Moreno Galvan, "Dario Villalba.
Kulturinstitut, Munich, Spanische Galeria Ramon Duran, Madrid, En el museo de Arte Moderno.
Kunst Hcutc, August 31-October 6, June 21-July 6, 1971 Madrid," Triunfo (Barcelona), June
1974 26, 1971
Musee de l'Art et de l'Histoire,
XIII Bienal de Sao Paulo, October- Geneva, October 4-31, 1971 Jacques-D. Rouiller, "Les Hommes-
December 1975. Catalogue Deson-Zaks Gallery, Chicago, Jan-
Bulles de Villalba," La Gazette
litteraire (Lausanne), May 2, 1972
Galeria Ponce, Mexico City, Realis- uary 28-February 29, 1972
mos en Espana, October-December Galerie Henry Meyer, Lausanne,
1975 closed February 17, 1972
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Vandres XII Bienal de Silo Paulo, October-
1970-1975, December n, 1975- December 1973. Catalogue
January 10, t976

117
Elena Florez, "El Pabellon de Espaiia
en la XII Bienal de Sao Paulo," Goya
(Madrid), no. 116, September 1973,
pp. 127-128
P.Aguilar, "Premio Bienal Sao
Paulo. Dario Villalba," ARA, no. 38,
October 11, 1973, pp. 139-144
Miguel Fernandez-Braso, "Dario
Villalba,Premio Bienal de Sao
Paulo," ABC (Madrid), October 16,
1973
Ramon Chao, "Dario Villalba: una
transparencia biologica," Tiiunfo
(Barcelona), December 15,
Maria Teresa Casanelles, "Dario
Villalba en las galerias Juana Mordo
y Vandres," El Europeo. November
2i, 1978, p. 50
Mario Merlino, "Dario Villalba:
cuerpos y figuras," Opinion, No-
vember 24, 1978
Victoria Combalia, "La neuva via
de Dario Villalba," Batik (Bar-
celona), no. 46, December 1978
Book
Hans-Jiirgen Miiller, Kunst kommt
1973 nicht von Konnen, Stuttgart, 1976,

Juan M. Bonet, "Conversation with

Dario Villalba," Flash An (Milan),
December 1973-January 1974, p. 26
Marta Traba, "Los Ilustradores de
la alienacion," Las Provincias
(Valencia), February 2, 1974
Maria Llmsa Borras, "entretien avec
Dario Villalba," L'Art Vivant (Paris),
June 1974, p. 16
Jose Maria Moreno "Dario Villalba,
en la sala grande de Vandres,"
Tiiunfo (Barcelona), August 3, 1974
Pierre Restany, "Dario Villalba: det
rene engagement i det eksistentielle
vidnesbyrd," Louisiana Revy
(Humlebaek, Denmark), no. 4, Jan-
uary 18-February 23, 197s, pp. 8-10
Enrique Azcoaga, "Dario Villalba y
el Sufrimiento," Mundo Hispdnico,
no. 322, January 1975, pp. 44-47
"Tres analisis ejemplares," Don
Pablo. May 197(1, pp. 39-41
Rene Micha, "L'Oeuvre noire de
Villalba," Art International, vol.
XXI, January 1977, pp. 20-22
Maria Llmsa Borras, "Dario Villalba:
l'art comme processus," Art Press
International, vol. 4, February 1977,
p. 3t

Emiel Langui, "Hommage a la

douleur," Attitudes (Paris), no.
39/44, April-November 1977, pp.
47-48
Santiago Anion, "Dario Villalba,"
El Pais (Madrid), November 9, 1978,
p. 26

118
S3-
The Wait. 1974
(La Espeiaj
Photographic emulsion and oil on
canvas with aluminum and perspex,
105% x 70% x siVs" (267 x 180 x
135 cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

119
54-
The Wait. 1979
(La Espeia)
Photographic emulsion, bituminous
paint, oiland wax on canvas, 3
panels, each 79 x 63" (200 x 160 cm.)
Private Collection, Madrid

120
55-
Feet. 1979
(Pies)

Photographic emulsion and oil on

canvas, 79 x 63" (200 x 160 cm.)
Collection the artist
5 6.

Face 1979. 1979

(Faz 1979)
Photographic emulsion, oil, wax
and pencil on canvas, 79 x 63"
(200 x 160 cm.)
Collection the artist

123
57-
Head I 79. 1979
fCabeza 1 79)
Photographic emulsion, oil, wax
and pencil on canvas, 79 x 63"
(200 x 160 cm.)
Collection J. Sunol, Barcelona

124
S8.
Mystic 79. 1979
(Mistico 79)
Photographic emulsion, oil and wax
on canvas, 79 x 63" (200 x 160 cm.)
Collection the artist

125
 ZUSH

The rationalization of my work is valid when individual.

THE SYSTEM: A dialogue between my own Language (calligraphy meaning-
less, meaningful) and universal symbols (eye, world, beings . . .) Can be inter-
preted as distinct and personal paths.

CONSTANTS OF INVESTIGATION: The materialization of ideas. The biog-

raphy of my thoughts and feelings transformed into my private mythology.
The situation of beings in virtual time.
The fusion of Traditional and Technological visual Media.
The use of Space with and without constants or limits.
The evolution of my language (ANURA).
MY IDEAL: My work to be the essence of all Art extant past present and
future.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Kassel, Germany, Documents 6,

Galena Rene Metras, Barcelona, June 24-October 7, 1977. Catalogue

Gali, Fried, Porta, February 9-March Galeria Rene Metras, Barcelona,
1, 1966 El Collage a Catalunya, February-

Galeria Rene Metras, Barcelona,

March 1978
Artigau, Jordi Gali, Porta, April Galeria Ponce, Madrid, Grdfica,
7-25, 1967 Fantastica, March 10, 1978

IX Bienal de Sdo Paulo, September- Art Gallery of New South Wales,

December 1967. Catalogue Third Biennale of Sydney. April 12-
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Eros y el
May 27, 1979
Arte Actual en Espaha, May-June Galerias Ciento, Eude, Joan Prats,
Born Alberto Porta in Barcelona, 1971 Sala Gaspar, Barcelona, Festa de la
1946 Galeria Vandres, Madrid, La Paloma,
Letras, September 18, r979
Changed name to Zush, 1968 June 5 -July 31, 1972 Franklin Institute, Philadelphia,
Self-taught as a painter IKI, Diisseldorf, lnternationaler

New Spaces The Holographcr's
Markt Vision. September 26, 1979-March
Moved to Ibiza, 1968 iiir aktuelle kunst neues
Messagelande October 6-n, 197a 21, 1980. Catalogue
Worked in New York, 1975, 1977
.

Medellin, Colombia, III Bienal de

Stuttgart, Europn 79. September 29-
Lives in Ibiza
Arte Colteier, May i-June 15, 1972
October 8, r979

Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden, XV Bienal Internacional de SSo

Paulo. October 3-November 9, 1979
Spanskt, November 10-December
9, 1973
ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS
Haus der Kunst, Munich, Spanische
Kunst Heme, August 31-October 6, Galeria Rene Metras, Barcelona,
1974. Catalogue Alucinaciones, November is-
Galeria Seiquer, Madrid, Homenaje
December 10, 1968
al Surrealismo. January 197s Galeria Ivan Spence, Ibiza,
Alucinaciones, July 26, 1969
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Vandres
1970-1975. December 11, 197s- Galeria Seiquer, Madrid, May 5-25,
January 10, 1976 1970

126
 1 1

Galeria Rene Metras, Barcelona, Miguel Veyrat, "Zush: 'ha nacido

Ego Zush Production, October 7- elhiperrealismo mental,' " Nuevo
November 4, 1970 Diario (Madrid), June 7, 1973
Galeria Sen, Madrid, Ego Zush Miguel Logrofio, "Zush: el individ-
Production, January 18-February 6, ualismo como conducta estetica,"
1 97 Blanco y Negro (Madrid), June 9,
Galerie Rive Gauche, Brussels, May 1973
5 -June 4, 1 97 Elena Florez, "El Misterio y la
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, May 29- inteligencia en la obra de Zush";
June 28, 1973. Catalogue "Zush: 'Tengo gran esperanza en la
renacimiento de la humanidad,' "
Galeria Ivan Spence, Ibiza, 1973
El Alcazar (Madrid), June 23, 1973,
Galerias Dau al Set, Rene Metras, p. 29
Barcelona, Obras dc Porta Zush
November 20-December Javier Rubio, "Una puerta en la
i<)6s-7r, 21,
Pintura: Zush," ABC (Madrid), June
1974. Catalogue
23, 1973
Galeria Ivan Spence, Ibiza, 1974
Joaquim Dols Rusinol, "Porta Zush
Galeria Temps, Valencia, April 3-
en Dau al Set," Destino (Barcelona),
25, 1975. Catalogue no. 1940, December 7, 1974
Sala de la Cultura de la Caia de Maria Lluisa Borras," Alberto Porta
Ahorros de Navarra, Pamplona, 'Zush/ " Gazeta del Arte (Madrid),
October 15-26, 1975. Catalogue no. 36, January 30, 1975, pp. 4-5
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, After the Luis Figuerola Ferreti, "El Arte en
Eclipse. October-November 1976
Madrid," Goyn (Madrid), no. 133,
Marlborough Galeria d'Arte, Rome, July 1976, pp. 45-46
La Morte della mia vita passata, Santiago Amon, "jPorta Versus
November-December 1976. Zush?," El Pais (Madrid), October
Catalogue
1976
Galerie de France, Paris, March 10- Gilles Plazy, "Zush ou l'inattendu,"
April 16, 1977. Catalogue
Le Quotidien de Paris, March 30,
Galleriet, Lund, Sweden, April 15- 1977
May 3, 1978 Bruno Cora, "Zush," Data (Milan),
Galerie Dr. Ursula Schurr, Stuttgart, no. 26, April-June 1977
March 3-April 5, 1979
Giinther Wirth, "Hieroglyphische
Galeria Vandres, Madrid, Yasmu. Felder," Stuttgarder Zeitung. March
January 1 ^-February 16, 1980 23, 1979
Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona, El Pais (Madrid), November 9, 1979,
Tucare. February 1980 p. 5

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Books

Newspapers and Periodicals Zush, Alberto Porta: La Explosion

de la Ments, Barcelona, L969
Mireille Aranias, "Zush, le solitaire
d'Ibiza," Special (Brussels), no. 319,
Alexandre Cirici, L'Art Catald
May 12, 1971, pp. 59-60 Contemporani. Barcelona, 1970, pp.
255,297, 321-322, 325, 342
Miguel Fernandez-Braso,
"Encuentro con Zush," ABC Hans-Jiirgen Miiller, Kunst kommt
nicht von Konnen, Stuttgart, 1976,
(Madrid!, June 2, 1973, pp. 69-70
p. 2S7
"Zush," Pueblo (Madridl, June 7,
1973

127
59-
Diobeyena. 1974
Acrylic and pencil on paper, 29% x
22" (76 x 56 cm.
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

./

'4l M-jr^Mfr,);..'

:>k,

'<:.

128
6o.
Zizards Nasha. 1975
Pencil, watercolor and collage on
paper, x 28 %" (102 x 73 cm.)
40%
Collection Lambert, Brussels

K
MM
i\ 447/

ml, I ' m
mm.
Mm
.

S>i
WmWm
^

4|M

w>,^-.

129
6i.
Braeina Heioea. 1975
Pencil, watercolor and collage on
paper, 30^ x 20%" (77 x 51 cm.|
Lent by Galeria Vandres, Madrid

130
62.

The Death of My Past Life 11. 1975

Mixed media on paper, 40V6 x 28%"
(102 x 73 cm.)
Collection J. Sufiol, Barcelona

131
63 .

Ego Naia. 1976

Oil, pencil and collage on paper,
22V2 x 29 7/s " (57 x 76 cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

64.
Africa Verolutzi Euioda Dovest.
1978
Oil, pencil, wax and collage on
paper, 22% x 30%" [58 x 78 cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

132
65-
Time. 1978
Mixed media on paper, 29 Vi x 41%"
(75 x 105 cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

133
66.
Asura-Tucare. 1979
Oil and ink on paper, 41 % x 27 Vi"
(106 x 70 cm.)
The Solomon R.
Collection
Guggenheim Museum, Anonymous
Gift

134
67 .

The Tarot Cards. 1976-79

Mixed media on paper, 7 cards, each
29I/8 x i7Vs" (74 x 43.5 cm.)

Lent by Galeria Vandres, Madrid

AV -AAv v;y
$ #

>&
AAAA^'-v
''"'" h: :
'

.
'^"J- :iJ "
'"

v :
c ;
-
'""*'
"''At*

MMMM . . a

-
- -

^-/i

135
68.

The World of the Comparative

Baserds. 1978-79
(El Mundo de los Baserds
comparables)
Mixed media on paper, 38 pages,
each 11% x 7%" (28.9 x 20 cm.)
Collection J. Sunol, Barcelona

r^~.C<p ? p
,

136
69 .

The Book of Feathers. 1978-79

Mixed media on paper, 38 pages,
each ia% x io 1^" (31.5 x 26 cm.)
Collection the artist

\
t 1

lb ^..

PBS" >
4

|
~^

137
70.
Tucaies-Evidas I-IV. 1978-79
Oil, acrylic, pencil and ink on
canvas, 4 panels, each 21% x 55%"
(55 x 142 cm.)
Lent by Galeria Vandres, Madrid

!' ' *''-.

i
Mm
6 <t

*
> >mffi,

138
 ?

;^ 7 i

I
i

"
3

"
^ M

139
71-
Vemisiz Evode. 1979
Acrylic on canvas, 76% x 113I4"
(195 x 288 cm.)
Lent by Galena Vandres, Madrid

140
141
 SELECTED GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Newspapers and Periodicals York Times, June 3, 1979, pp. D 1,

Juan Antonio Aguirre, "New Gen-

D27
eration in Spain," Art and Artists, Gloria Moure, "The Specificity and
no. 12, March 1971, pp. 50-53 Dead-end of Spanish Artistic Cre-
ation," Art actuel: Skira annuel,
Maria Teresa Blanch, "El Arte Espa-
Geneva, 1979, pp. 142-144
nol de 1980: Abstraccion y Natural-
ismo," Batik (Barcelona), no. so, Alvin Smith, "No inspiraciones Pide
elpintor a di'ossino doblones," .4rt
1979, PP- 5-7
Gallery, no. 9, June 1974, pp. 70-73
Juan M. Bonet, "Corto viaje a
Valencia y a su pintura," El Pais Exhibition Catalogues
(Madrid), December 23, 1976
and T. Llorens, "Spagna:
V. Bozal
Juan M. Bonet, "El arte joven," La
Vanguarda Artistica, Realita So-
Calle (Madrid), no. 70, July 24, 1979,
ciale," Biennale lnternazionale
PP- 44-45 d'Arte, Venice, June-October 1976,
Valeriano Bozal, "Planteamiento pp. 176-185
Sociologico de la Nueva Pintura
Francisco Calvo and Angel Gon-
Espafiola," Cuadcrnos hispano-
zalez Garcia, Cronica de la Pintura
americanos, no. 235, 1969, pp. 59-60
de postguerra: 1940-1960, Madrid,
Victoria Combalia, "Les avant- Galena Multitud, October-Novem-
gardes en Espagne," Art Press (Paris), ber 1976
no. 22, January-February 1976, pp.
Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Millarcs Cano-
26-27
gar Rivera Saura, New York, Pierre
William Dyckes, "Young Spanish Matisse Gallery, March 15-April q,
Artists," Guidepost, March 10, i960
1967, p. 25
Victoria Combalia, "Espana: el
Jose-Agusto Franca, "Espagne 1956- medio en un momento de
artistico
1966," Aujourd'hui. no. 52, Febru- transicion," ro e Biennale de Paris,
ary 1966, p. 56 1977, PP- 36-38
Manuel Garcia i Garcia, "Notas Frank O'Hara, New Spanish Paint-
sobre pintura valenciana de los
la ing and Sculpture. New York, The
setenta," Batik (Barcelona), no. 50, Museum of Modern Art, July 20-
July/August 1979, pp. 43-45 September 25, i960
Henri Ghent, "The Second Genera-
tion," Art Gallery, no. 9, June 1974, Books
pp. 59-65 Juan Antonio Aguirre, Arte Ultimo,
Henri Ghent, "Spanish Art Tran-
in Madrid, 1969
sition," Art International, vol. XIX, V. Bozaland T. Llorens, eds., Espana.
September 15, 1975, pp. 15-22 Vanguardia artistica y realidad
Daniel Giralt-Miracle, "Recording social: 1936-1976. Barcelona, 1976
Reality," Art and Artist*, no. 3, June Vicente Aguilera Cerni, Iniciacion
1977, PP- 30-35 al arteespanol de la postguerra, Bar-
Fernando Huici, "Seis artistas valen- celona, 1970
cianos," El Pais (Madrid), November Alexandre Cirici, V Art catald con-
3, 1977, P- 26 temporani. Barcelona, 1969
Jay Jacobs, "Spanish Abstract Art: William Dvckes, ed., Conk'mpo-
The First Generation," Art Gallery. rary Spanish Art. New York, 1975
no. 9, June 1974, pp. 16-22, 68
J. Marin-Medina, J. Molas and A.
Hilton Kramer, "Painters and Poli- Puig, Dau al Set: ?o anos despu&s,
tics in The New Spain," The New Barcelona, n.d.

14a
PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION FIGURES IN THE TEXT

Color Courtesy William Dyckes: p. 27

Manuel Bragado, Richard Conahay, Courtesy Galerie Karl Flinker,

Pans: p. 16 bottom
Elias Dolcet and Juan Dolcet: cat.
nos. 13, 17, 41, 45, 47, so, 51, 54, Courtesy Guadalimar, Madrid: p. 30
61,67 Courtesy Antonio Lopez-Garcia:
Ramon Calvet: cat. nos. 2, s p. 21

Courtesy Teresa Gancedo: cat. Courtesy Marlborough Gallery Inc.,

nos. 22, 27 New York: pp. 13 bottom left, 23
Muntadas: cat. no. 28, pp. 78, 79 Robert E. Mates and Mary Donlon:
Courtesy Miquel Navarro: cat. pp. 11, 12
nos. jo, j3
Courtesy Pierre Matisse Gallery,
New York: p. 13, top, bottom right
Black and White Courtesy Galeria Rene Metras,
Manuel Bragado, Richard Conahay, Barcelona: p. 16 top left
Elias Dolcet and Juan Dolcet: cat. Courtesy Juana Mordo: p. 18
nos. 14-16, 18, 19, 31, 32, 34-36, 38,
Muntadas: p. 25
40, 4^-44, 46, 48, 49, 5 2 5 3, S5"59,
,
Courtesy Galeria Vandres, Madrid:
60, 62-66, 68-71
p. 16 top right
Ramon Calvet: cat. nos. 1, 3, 4, 6-11

Courtesy Carmen Calvo: cat. no. 12 PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ARTISTS

Courtesy Teresa Gancedo: cat.
Francisco Jose Alberola, Valencia:
nos. 20, 21, 23, 24a, 24b, 2s, 26
pp. 48, 82
Muntadas: cat. no. 28, pp. 77-80
Joan Borras: p. 38
Courtesy Miquel Navarro: cat.
Richard Conahay: pp. 96, 106
nos. 29, 37
Courtesy Teresa Gancedo: p. 58
G. Mezza: p. 68 left

Domingo Sarrey: p. 116

Tamiranda: p. 68 right
Courtesy Zush: p. 126

143
 EXHIBITION 80/3

4,500 copies of this catalogue, de-

signed by Malcolm Grear Designers,
typeset by Dumar Typesetting, Inc.,

have been printed by Eastern Press

in March 1980 for the Trustees of
The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation on the occasion of the
exhibition New Images from Spain.

144
SERGI AGUILAK

CARMEN ( ALVO

zusu